Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant

by Humberto Fontova

  Maria was in the middle of a maelstrom. Her husband was out there too, somewhere. She was treading water frantically with her last reserves of strength when she felt a strong hand grab her. She focused through the spray and saw about ten people hanging onto an ice chest. A man reached out from the group and pulled her toward them just as a blast from the water cannon hit them again. By now all three tugs had turned on their water cannons.

  The Castro boats started circling the sinking tug—faster, faster, gunning the engines to a horrendous clattering roar, and creating a huge whirlpool in the process. “People were screaming all around me,” recalls Maria. “A woman on the ice chest had her baby daughter ripped from her arms by the blast and she was screaming, screaming, screaming!”

  The hysterical woman let go of the ice chest and went under in search of her child—neither one reappeared from the swirling waters.

  The roar from the water cannons, the racket from the boat engines creating the deadly whirlpool—this hellish din muffled most of the screams.

  Soon Maria was ripped from the ice chest by another blast from the water cannon. “Juanito hadn’t been holding on very tightly any more,” she sobbed in testimony. “He’d been coughing real bad, coughing up mouthfuls of sea water. Finally I felt him go limp. Then the blast hit us. I went under again and came up screaming. ‘Grab Juan! Grab my boy! Por favor!’ But everyone was scrambling, everyone was under the blast of the gun. My son! My son!”

  This time, ten-year-old Juan never resurfaced. Maria Garcia lost her son, husband, brother, sister, two uncles, and three cousins in the maritime massacre.

  In all, forty-three people drowned, eleven of them children. Carlos Anaya was three when he drowned, Yisel Alvarez four, Helen Martinez six months. Fortunately, a Greek freighter bound for Havana happened upon the slaughter and sped in to the rescue. Only then did one of the Castro boats throw out some life preservers on ropes and start hauling people in.

  Thirty-one survivors were finally plucked from the seas and hauled back to Cuba, where all were jailed or put under house arrest. But a few later escaped Cuba on rafts and reached Miami. Hence we have Maria Garcia’s gut-wrenching testimony. It was presented to the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and Amnesty International, who all filed “complaints,” “reports,” “protests,” whatever.

  No government could possible condone, much less directly order such a thing—right? Wrong. One of the gallant water cannon gunners was even personally decorated by Castro. Nothing is done by Castro’s coast guard without orders from the top. As always, there was a method to the Maximum Leader’s murderous madness. The Clinton team—national security adviser Sandy Berger in particular—came into office hell-bent on “improving relations” with Cuba. Castro knew this. He also knew that Clinton was very touchy about Cuban refugees. In 1980, the Mariel Boatlift criminals (a mere handful of the total exodus, actually) had been shipped to Fort Chafee, Arkansas, under Arkansas governor Bill Clinton’s watch. After being told they’d be shipped back to Castroland, the Marielitos went berserk, rioting and burning down half the encampment.

  Arkansas voters were aghast. When up for reelection, the man who had accepted the Marielitos, Governor Clinton, was trounced.

  Some say the tugboat atrocity was Castro’s way of demonstrating to Clinton that he wouldn’t let a mass exodus of Cubans happen while Clinton was president. “Bill Clinton is terrified of Castro,” said Dick Morris, “He looks over his shoulder for rafters the way Castro is always looking over his shoulder expecting an invasion of Marines.”1

  And indeed, two months after the tugboat massacre, Castro cut an immigration deal with a receptive Clinton administration. What we now call the “wet foot/dry foot” policy came into effect. Make it to shore, you stay, but no longer qualify automatically for political asylum. We intercept you at sea, you go back to Castroland.

  To its credit, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service strongly condemned the tugboat massacre. But I can’t help thinking that had Ronald Reagan been president, he might have done more than wag his finger at the Communist murderers.

  What was the net result of all the protests made about the massacre by the United Nations and other “multilateral” organizations? Well, barely a year and a half later, Castro received an engraved invitation to address the United Nations as a guest of honor.

  And did Castro’s tugboat massacre put a cork in liberal blatherings about what a helluva guy Castro is? You’ve got to be joking. Instead, the pet manatee of the Democratic Party, Michael Moore (an “outstanding American,” according to Fidel himself), has done what liberals like to do—attack the victims.2

  “These Cuban exiles,” he snorts, “for all their chest-thumping and terrorism, are really just a bunch of wimps. That’s right. Wimps! When you don’t like the oppressor in your country, you stay there and try to overthrow him. You don’t just turn tail and run like these Cubans. Imagine if the American colonists had all run to Canada and then insisted the Canadians had a responsibility to overthrow the British down in the States! . . . So the Cubans came here expecting us to fight their fight for them. And, like morons, we have.”

  Moore adds: “These Cubans have not slept a wink since they grabbed their assets and headed to Florida.”

  “Grabbed their assets,” folks. Let that sink in for a second. Does he mean the clothes Cuban refugees wore on their backs? The few crumbs they stuffed in their pockets? Does this imbecile realize that Castro stole all “their assets?” Does this moron know that no one could leave Cuba with anything? Does this obese idiot know that women had their very earrings yanked off their ears by Castroite guards at the airport?

  One elderly lady insisted on wearing a small crucifix. The guard demanded she take it off: “You can’t take it. That pendant belongs to la revolución!”

  “The hell it does!” she yelled back in tears. “This crucifix belonged to my son—who you swine murdered at the firing squad! I’ll die before I give it to you Communist assassins!”

  She was dragged off.

  Or perhaps the mothers clinging to their sons and daughters as the Castroite murders fired their water cannons were merely “grabbing their assets” so they could live like piggy Michael Moore.

  Such was the “grabbing of assets” as we left Cuba, Mr. Moore. Did someone mention “Stupid White Men?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHO NEEDS FREEDOM?

  Even when innocent Cubans escape to Florida—and freedom—liberals sometimes demand that armed guards send them back to Communist Castroland. They can’t believe anyone could prefer Miami to that “happy little island” governed by benign Fidel.

  During the Elián González controversy, liberals chanted: “A son belongs with his father. The rule of law should prevail.” No Cuban Americans disagreed.

  The González family in Miami never wanted a media circus. They only wanted to take care of Elián and wait for his father to immigrate here, as he originally intended. Such reunions happen practically every week in Miami. The circus, the using of little Elián “as a political football,” was all Castro’s doing.

  The evidence—zealously shunned by the mainstream media—was overwhelming. Mauricio Vincent, a reporter for Madrid newspaper El Pais, wrote that he’d visited Elián’s home town of Cardenas and talked with Elián’s father, Juan Miguel, along with other family members and friends. All confirmed that Juan Miguel longed for his son Elián to flee to the United States.

  In phone call after phone call from Elián’s Cuban family to his Miami family, the Cubans made themselves very clear: Please take care of Elián. His father’s on the way.

  Juan Miguel had even applied for a U.S. visa. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service knew this, but it became public only after Judicial Watch uncovered the evidence: an INS document written by INS attorney Rebeca Sanchez-Roig about a conference call with commissioner Doris Meissner. “If coercion could be shown,” it read, “then the INS could potentially accept the chil
d’s asylum application and advise that there is no prohibition on age to child filing application. As such PA [political asylum] should proceed.”

  The Miami Herald reported that on November 26, 1999, the day after Elián was rescued, Juan Miguel had obtained certified copies of Elián’s birth certificate and his marriage certificate to his deceased exwife, Elizabeth. These documents are the first order of business for Cubans seeking a visa to the United States. Please notice the date—Juan Miguel did these things before Castro intervened in the Elián case, which he did on December 5, 1999. Elián’s Miami uncle, Lazaro, said it best: ‘I always said I would turn over Elián to his father,” he said repeatedly. “But Juan Miguel should come here and claim him. It was not Juan Miguel requesting Elián—it was Fidel.”1

  Why did Castro intervene? People, including little boys, flee from Cuba every week. Why Castro’s obsession with getting this one back?

  Exiled Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante explained it best, writing in the Miami Herald on April 17, 2000, just days before the raid that would seize Elián from his Miami relatives, “Every year, Santeria, the African-rooted religion popularly practiced in Cuba, publishes a horoscope. The Santeros ‘toss the coconut shells’ and forecast the future according to whether the shells fall flesh side up or down. The Santeros have tied the future of the Castro regime to the fate of Elián González, who is to them the reincarnation of Elegua, a kind of Christ child. The position of the coconut shells foreshadows ills for the ‘tribe’ of Cuba and a worse fate for the ‘chief,’ Fidel Castro.

  “As soon as the Santeros learned of Elián’s fate (the boy had been rescued at sea, saved from sharks by the appearance of dolphins and after forty-eight hours in the water under a blazing sun did not show the burns and sores typical of those rescued at sea), they declared that he was a divine Elegua and that if he remained in Miami Fidel Castro ‘would fall.’ ”

  Now you understand his desperation. So many Cubans nowadays—some say Castro is a Santero too—dabble in Santeria that their priests’ prophecy could have seriously shaken Castro’s hold on the island.

  On January 31, 2000, a Christian evangelical minister from India, the Reverend Kilari Anan Paul, visited Cuba. The reverend was closely following the Elián saga from his native India and was severely miffed by the Cuban exile crackpots and hotheads in Miami. The reverend stood shoulder to shoulder with Castro on this one, completely in favor of the United States returning Elián to Cuba and his father. Toward this noble end, the reverend attempted to meet with Juan Miguel González at his Cardenas home—but found him under house arrest.

  Regarding the hapless Juan Miguel, forget the idiotic and smarmy CBS interview conducted by Fidel’s chum Dan Rather. Instead, read the last chapter of David Limbaugh’s book Absolute Power: The Legacy of Corruption in the Clinton-Reno Justice Department. Limbaugh saw through the farce—and I don’t just mean the raid President Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, ordered against Elián’s Miami family. Even many liberals, including Lawrence Tribe and Alan Dershowitz, recognized the raid as a legal atrocity. But Limbaugh documents how the judicial outrages had started months before.

  A lawyer himself, Limbaugh informs us that several affidavits swore to Juan Miguel’s original wishes for his son before Castro put the squeeze on him. These were from Juan’s first cousins. One even swore that Juan had repeatedly told him how he yearned to escape to the United States, even “rowing over in a washtub” if necessary. More important, on December 1, 1999, the INS asserted that Elián’s uncle Lazaro in Miami was indeed the boy’s legal custodian and that Florida’s family court was the place to arbitrate further issues.

  But then everything changed. On December 5, 1999, Castro began demanding Elián’s return, and by January 5 the same INS ruled that state courts had no authority in these matters, that neither Elián nor Lazaro on his behalf could apply for political asylum, and that Elián had to return to Cuba by January 14.

  The mainstream media sang from Castro’s song sheet. But Brit Hume at FOX News asked the pertinent questions, things like: Why is the National Council of Churches involved in this dispute? Are they really impartial? Why is Clinton’s lawyer Greg Craig pleading Juan Miguel’s (read: Castro’s) case? And by the way, who’s paying him? Can a man who works as a doorman in a hotel in Cuba afford somebody like Craig?2

  Hume asked the questions other famed investigative reporters wouldn’t—and he didn’t let up. Just a week after the Janet Reno raid—but before Elián was deported—Hume ran a special report: “Customs officials at Dulles Airport caught those doctors sent from Cuba to be with Elián González with drugs, which they seized. The Miami Herald reports the drugs included phenobarbital, a sedative, and Miltown, a tranquilizer.”3 Then came pictures of the calm and smiling Elián in his papa’s arms.

  That the liberal media is Castrophilic we know. But why did President Clinton trash America’s legal standards, reverse a refugee policy dating from the beginning of the Cold War, and become Castro’s accomplice in returning Elián to Communism? Some say Castro “had something” on Clinton. Others that Castro threatened him with another Mariel Boatlift. Others say that Clinton wanted, as part of his “legacy,” an opening to Cuba. I think these last two were his motivations for the Elián kidnapping.

  The mainstream media did its part by portraying Cuban American Miami as far worse than Communist Cuba. On April 2, 2000, Katie Couric of NBC’s Today show read from her cue cards: “Some suggested over the weekend that it’s wrong to expect Elián González to live in a place that tolerates no dissent or freedom of political expression. They were talking about Miami. All eyes on south Florida and its image this morning. Another writer this weekend called it ‘an out of control banana republic within America.’ ”

  I’ve already mentioned Eleanor Clift’s gem, but it bears repeating: “To be a poor child in Cuba may be better than to be a poor child in the U.S.” Clift saw the stunned look on Bill O’Reilly’s face and elaborated a bit. Castro’s Cuba, she said “is a place where he [Elián] doesn’t have to worry about going to school and being shot at, where drugs are not a big problem, where he has access to free medical care and where the literacy rate I believe is higher than this country’s.”

  Newsweek writers Brook Larmer and John Leland agreed: “Elián might expect a nurturing life in Cuba, sheltered from the crime and social breakdown that would be part of his upbringing in Miami.”

  While hosting Tipper Gore on his show, CNN’s Larry King joined the herd: “Tipper, one of the things that Elián González’s father said that I guess would be hard to argue with, that his boy’s safer in a school in Havana than in a school in Miami. He would not be shot in a school in Havana.”

  NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, commenting on Castro, found him “old-fashioned, courtly—even paternal.” No one said that about the Cuban Americans in Miami, who were routinely portrayed as extremists.

  David Limbaugh seemed to be one of the few commentators who actually studied the INS’s regulations. The INS’s own manual stated: “Asylum officers should not assume that a child cannot have an asylum claim independent of the parents’.” The manual offers guidelines for its officers, including examples of asylum claims from six-year-olds. By April 22, 1999, this same INS was kicking down Lazaro’s door and wrenching a screaming Elián from the house.

  Limbaugh also reminds (or informs) us of an affidavit by Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin. Sister O’Laughlin was president of Barry University and a personal friend of Janet Reno. The good sister was a kindly, intelligent person who originally favored returning Elián to Cuba, for the usual well-meaning (though naïve) reasons: a child belongs with his father.

  Well, Sister O’Laughlin, a lifelong Democrat, soon changed her mind as she watched the Castroites at work. Her sworn affidavit mentions Castro’s goons scouring her house before Elián met there with his grandmothers, who had been brought from Cuba to meet with him. It mentions the president of the National Council of Churches confessing to Siste
r O’Laughlin that “Castro was dictating negotiations.” But it was the abject fear in the eyes of Elián’s visiting grandmothers that convinced Sister O’Laughlin.

  She confessed to praying and weeping all night after the meeting. This, again, was in her sworn affidavit, ignored by the mainstream media but reported in David Limbaugh’s book Absolute Power. Limbaugh writes: “After the meeting, Sister O’Laughlin changed her mind. She saw ‘fear’ in Elián’s grandmothers—fear of the Castro regime—and thought it morally wrong to return Elián to Cuba. O’Laughlin was so upset that she decided to go to Capitol Hill at her own expense to lobby Reno to allow Elián to stay in the United States.”4 But who was Janet Reno going to believe, Sister O’Laughlin or Fidel Castro?

  As Dan Rather let America know, this whole problem was America’s fault. “Today’s irony,” he said in grave-frown mode on his April 6, 2000, broadcast, “is that to get close to his son, this boy’s father had to travel more than a thousand miles to a foreign capital and even then, even now, he must wait for the long-sought reunion. Such are the ways of politics and the law in a free society.”5

  Sure, Castro sinks the boats of fleeing Cubans, jails his subjects who try to escape, and puts Elián’s father under house arrest—and it’s all America’s fault.

  With the investigation into 60 Minutes on President George W. Bush’s National Guard service, CBS, Dan Rather, and the 60 Minutes production team finally got their comeuppance. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch. An investigation into the 60 Minutes show featuring the interview with Juan Miguel on May 2000 might have proven more shocking.

  Pedro Porro is a Cuban American who worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in 2000. He was the translator for Juan Miguel during the famous interview with Dan Rather. “I wore an earpiece. Dan’s questions would come through, then I’d translate them into Spanish for Juan Miguel,” Porro recalls. “Well, when I saw the interview as it appeared on the 60 Minutes show I didn’t know whether to throw up or start crying,” he says. “Even during the interview it was obvious that Gregory Craig [former Clinton lawyer and friend then acting as Juan Miguel’s (read: Fidel Castro’s) lawyer] was stage-managing the entire thing. The questions for Juan Miguel were actually fed to Dan Rather by Gregory Craig.