Free Cuba Foundation
http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/
Castro's Family Values
By Charles Lane
Sunday, January 30, 2000; Page B07
The Cuban government firmly and sincerely supports the humanitarian value
of family reunification. Or so it would seem, judging by the energy and
resources Havana has devoted to its international campaign for the return
of 6-year-old castaway Elian Gonzalez from his relatives in Miami to his
father in
Cuba.
But consider the Fidel Castro regime's behavior toward Luis Grave de
Peralta Morrell and his family.
In 1989, Grave de Peralta, a physicist, returned home to Cuba from an
academic exchange in Italy. Having been able to read Western news accounts
of the
changes in Eastern Europe and the uprising in China, he was disgusted to
find Cuba's official press attacking perestroika and justifying the
massacre at
Tiananmen Square. So he resigned from the Cuban Communist Party.
Fired from his university, Grave de Peralta spent the next half-year
researching and writing a 200-page manuscript in which he documented
self-contradictions and lies in Fidel Castro's speeches and writings. State
security agents arrested Grave de Peralta and charged him with "rebellion
through
peaceful means"--that's a crime in Cuba--and, in 1992, sentenced him to 13
years in prison.
Declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and the
Committee on Human Rights of the National Academy of Sciences, Grave de
Peralta was
released in January 1996 after then-Rep. Bill Richardson personally
intervened with Castro. As a condition of his release, Grave de Peralta was
required to
emigrate, but he was told his family could follow.
Indeed, his two sons, Gabriel, 13, and Cesar, 8, have been granted U.S.
visas and Cuban exit permits. But the Cuban government continues to deny an
exit
permit to the boys' mother, Maria Bouza Fortes. (She and Grave de Peralta
were divorced during the four years they have been obliged to live in
different
countries.) Grave de Peralta, now 42 and studying for a doctorate in
engineering at Texas Tech, showed me some of the letters the family has
sent to Cuban
officials from Castro on down, only to be ignored or brushed off with vague
alusions to "orders from above."
This, then, is the choice imposed by the Cuban government on this
politically incorrect family. The children can go to America to live in
freedom with their
father--abandoning their mother in a totalitarian society where she lost
her job as an English teacher because of her former husband's dissent. Or
they can
remain with her, and, in all likelihood, forfeit any hope of seeing their
father as long as Fidel Castro remains in power.
A Miami-based Cuban exile organization, Cuba-New Generation, says it has
documented nine cases similar to that of Grave de Peralta, among them the
story
of Manuel Amigo Trejo, who was jailed for dissident activities and released
to Sweden in 1994. His wife and two daughters have Swedish visas, but the
Cuban government won't give them exit permits.
Castro's government has always manipulated family relationships to exert
control over potentially troublesome subjects. When musicians, athletes and
scientists travel abroad, they are often obliged to leave their spouses and
children in Cuba, to discourage them from defecting. Paquito D'Rivera, the
great jazz
musician, bolted anyway in 1978; it took a nine-year campaign to persuade
Castro to let his son join him abroad.
Then there's the agony of family members separated from loved ones who are
jailed without due process for such offenses as "dangerousness" or
"contempt." Amnesty International has just documented the case of Victor
Arroyo, a dissident journalist, who was caught distributing some 140 toys,
purchased with donations from Miami, to poor children in Pinar del Rio
province. He has been sentenced to six months in prison for "hoarding." His
mother,
Marta Carmona, waited for him during a previous 21-month sentence on
political charges; now she's waiting for him again.
Everywhere it has existed, Communism has generated refugees; Cuba is no
exception. Often the price of escape is some years of separation from
family. One
of the three survivors of Elian's ill-fated boat, Arianne Horta, decided at
the last minute to leave her 5-year-old daughter in Cuba rather than take
her on the
desperate journey that cost Elian's mother her life. This little girl and
her mother will now live apart indefinitely.
Castro may be reaping a public relations windfall from the tragedy that has
befallen the Gonzalez family. He may even have the law on his side in this
case.
But none of that should obscure the fact that the whole episode probably
would never have occurred if the Cuban dictator had long ago instituted the
economic and political reforms Cuba's people so plainly need. Fidel Castro,
unifier of the Cuban family? The pose is pure hypocrisy.
The writer is a former editor of the New Republic.
� Copyright 2000 The Washington
Post Company
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