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ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
THE GUARDIAN ANGELS ARE STILL WATCHING
OVER THE CUBAN CHILDREN
THE DREAM AND THE REALITY
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9-17-00 - DREAM - I was taking care of tiny child wearing an orange dress. She was no bigger than a handful. She was crawling on the floor amongst other children who were normal size. I saw a milk bottle on the floor which was old milk. I decided I would wash out the bottle and give her fresh milk so she would grow. I took the bottle to the sink and began to pour water into it. Out of the top came bean sprouts which then developed black moldy growths. I pulled at the sprouts until the came out so I could put milk into it fresh. I heard music coming from the hallway so I went to look. Next door some black people lived and the music they played was blasting out into the hallways that no one could hear anything else much less hear oneself think. I thought to myself that I would ask them to please turn their music down. I had to do a short errand and when I came back the black people's music was silent, so I didn't go there to talk to them about it. I went back into my apartment and there stood a man who worked for me as a maintenance man. He was a survivor of the Bay of Pigs massacre. Most of his family had been killed in the massacre when the United States didn't help the men who were fighting for their freedom. In America he eventually became a Navy Seal and was a Vietnam War Hero for the United States. He was holding the tiny child dressed in orange. He held her to his chest and was singing the hymn, "All Through the Night". NOTE: I don't want to embarrass this man or his family, but after the war he and his wife became the parents of a tiny little girl just like this. This tiny child died in his arms because she was paralyzed during birth with a broken neck. The Guardian Angel still watches over the men, women, and children who wish to be free. |
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1999: The cause of Cuba's freedom and the Cuban exile is in the major crossroad of their History CUBA'S FREEDOM FIGHTER - ANTONIA MACEO - 1845 - 1896 Cuba activists urge freedom of political prisoners - June 14, 1999 CUBA - Intellectual and academic freedom CUBA'S INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS OBLIGATIONS FREEDOM HOUSE CALLS ON UN TO INVESTIGATE CUBA, CLAIMS RIGHTS SITUATION DETERIORATING FREEDOM HOUSE - Cuba - Political Rights: 7 - Civil Liberties: 7 - Status: Not Free Human Rights violations inside of Cuba Lesson learned from Cuba: Appreciate freedom TASTE OF A BETTER LIFE FUELS DARING FLIGHT TO FREEDOM - CUBAN SYSTEM OFFERED NO HOPE, ESCAPEE SAYS |
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Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2000 Hijacked Cuban plane goes down near Florida FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida-- A Russian-built single-engine plane with as many as 18 people on board was hijacked out of Cuba on Tuesday and went down in international waters as it headed toward Florida, officials said. The plane, which was believed to be equipped with floats that would enable it to land on water, was apparently heading toward south Florida, Jim Reynolds, a spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale International Airport, told CNN. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration reported the plane went down in international waters. The U.S. Coast Guard has dispatched ships and a rescue helicopter to the site where the plane either crashed or landed on the water, according to Petty Officer Scott Carr. CNN's Carl Rochelle said there was no communication from the aircraft to the United States. Havana Flight Control said the aircraft was headed in a north-northwesterly direction toward the United States.Its nearest possible U.S. destination would be Key West, Florida, some 90 miles away. Rochelle said the aircraft has the capacity to fly about 80 miles per hour. The Coast Guard said it was sending every available asset to search for the downed plane, Petty Officer Robert Suddarth told CNN. It was believed to be 60 miles southwest of Marquesas Key in the Florida Keys. According to an official at the Miami-Dade County Aviation Department, the plane left Cuba at about 9:30 a.m. EDT and disappeared from U.S. radar around 10:50 a.m. CNN Correspondent Carl Rochelle and The Associated Press contributed to this report. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tuesday September 19, 2000 Survivors, Body, Found in Sea After Cuban Hijack By Jim Loney MIAMI (Reuters) - Nine survivors and a corpse were plucked from the ocean Tuesday after a small Cuban plane apparently trying to flee the communist-ruled island went down in open sea during what Havana said was a hijack. The survivors and corpse -- believed to be all the people on board the plane -- were picked up in the Yucatan Channel west of Cuba hours later by the merchant vessel Chios Dream as the U.S. Coast Guard (news - web sites) and military mounted an air and sea search. ``The Chios Dream encountered aircraft debris and found 10 people in the water. Those people have been recovered and are onboard the Chios Dream,'' Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said at a news conference at Opa-Locka Airport near Miami, from which U.S. authorities staged the search. There was confusion over how many people had been on board the Soviet-built Antonov An-2, with U.S. officials earlier saying as many as 18. But those who were rescued -- three men, three women and three children -- said they and the dead man whose body was recovered were the only ones on the plane, the U.S. Coast Guard reported. At least one of the rescued men was badly hurt with head and neck injuries. Cuban authorities notified U.S. officials that the plane was hijacked from the island's western province of Pinar del Rio Tuesday morning. An official at Cuba's Civil Aviation Institute said the plane was a crop-duster engaged in agricultural work, but there were no details on who was on board or how the hijacking was carried out. Another version of the incident was offered by Miami NBC affiliate WTVJ, which reported that the plane's pilot dropped off his co-pilot, picked up his own family and flew out of Cuba. The plane, which was low on fuel, was first reported missing over the Florida Straits after Miami police said it was heading for Florida. The site of the rescue added confusion to the incident. U.S officials initially believed the plane had gone down about 80 miles southwest of Key West in the Florida Straits. But the survivors and the body were found about 180 miles southwest of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico. It was not known if the plane had crashed or deliberately ditched. The Panamanian-flagged Chios Dream was headed toward Key West late Tuesday. A Coast Guard helicopter was to meet the vessel Tuesday evening and a medical corpsman was to be lowered to the ship to assess injuries. ``We will evacuate the injured male who has the head and neck injuries. We will then assess the medical condition of the remaining persons on board and will make a determination at that time as to whether any further medical care is needed,'' Allen said. Those who were not in need of medical care could be taken aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, officials said. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service declined to comment on what might happen to the survivors. Under U.S. immigration policy, Cubans who reach U.S. shores are generally allowed to stay but those rescued at sea are usually returned to Cuba unless they can convince U.S. authorities they would face persecution if repatriated. A senior State Department official, asked about how the U.S. government would deal with any hijackers, said, ``We don't even know if it has been hijacked. If they want an asylum hearing, that would be a consideration.'' White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said that when U.S. officials were told there had been a hijacking, F-15 and F-16 jets were scrambled but never picked up the plane on radar. There have been several hijackings of planes from Cuba in past years. In the last high profile incident, in August 1996, a small plane hijacked by three Cubans who forced the pilot to fly to Florida plunged into the Gulf of Mexico. All four Cubans on board were rescued by a Russian freighter. In that case, as in several others in the past, a federal court in Tampa, Florida, acquitted the three Cubans of the hijacking a year later. The acquittal was vigorously denounced by Havana, which said it could encourage similar actions by other Cubans. The An-2 was designed just after World War II as a long-range bush plane to support forest rangers in vast Siberian forests. One model of the plane, the An-2V, is a floatplane version. Many aircraft in Cuba's civilian and military fleet are of Soviet origin, dating from the island's long and close ties with the former Soviet Union. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wednesday September 20, 2000 Cuba Pilot Lied About Hijack, Ex-Colleague Says LOS PALACIOS, Cuba (Reuters) - The pilot of a small plane which flew out of Cuba with passengers on board lied about being hijacked and was really seeking asylum in the United States, his former colleague said Wednesday. Flight engineer Juan Jose Galiano Cabrera had initially accompanied the pilot, Lenin Iglesias, when they set out for work together on Tuesday aboard a Soviet-built Antonov An-2 crop-duster in western Pinar del Rio province. Galiano told Reuters in Los Palacios, about 60 miles west of Havana, that Iglesias had persuaded him to stay behind at a landing strip by telling him a lie about going to pick up a check. He then flew on to another strip, picked up family and friends, and headed north for the United States. Soon after leaving, Iglesias radioed that he was being hijacked. ``He tricked me ... the hijack thing was a lie ... I never suspected that he would run away,'' Galiano said. Cuban authorities had not previously made clear whether they were treating the case as a genuine hijack or as an illegal attempt to leave the communist-ruled Caribbean island. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thursday September 21, 2000 Rescued Cubans Arrive in U.S. By ADRIAN SAINZ, Associated Press Writer KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) - Amid flashing cameras, they walked or were carried onto U.S. soil from a Coast Guard cutter in the dark of night but showed little emotion after two days at sea. The remaining eight Cuban survivors of a plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico were taken early Thursday at a Key West hospital, joining a ninth survivor airlifted there Tuesday night who has already received permission to stay in the United States. A 10th person died when the plane went down Tuesday about 50 miles west of Cuba. ``Thank God they're well,'' said Carlos Rodriguez, the brother-in-law of Liliana Ponzoa, 36, who was brought to the hospital on a stretcher. ``We're extremely emotional.'' Ponzoa, who suffered cuts and lacerations to her hands and legs, was admitted to Florida Lower Keys Hospital, nursing supervisor Rachel Long said. The other seven - two women, two men and three children - were evaluated and then released Thursday morning, leaving with officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, she said. The INS had said earlier that the men would be taken to Krome Detention Center in Miami, and the women and children would be taken to a hotel under guard. ``We were worried that she wouldn't be allowed into the United States,'' Sandra Ponzoa, sister of Liliana, said earlier. ``We imagined with the ordeal they went through, it would be very hard to send them back.'' U.S. law lets Cubans apply for residency if they reach U.S. soil. Ordinarily, those who are picked up at sea are returned to Cuba, but the survivors were brought ashore because of their medical conditions, Coast Guard spokesman Marc Woodring said. In the past, Cuban refugees found at sea and brought to the United States for medical treatment have generally been allowed to stay. Ponzoa's husband, Rodolfo Fuentes, 36, was the survivor airlifted to the hospital earlier, suffering head and neck injuries. He was described as in stable condition and doing well. He has been interviewed and is eligible to stay in the United States, the INS said. INS officials in Miami refused to elaborate about the status of the rest. ``Not until an INS officer has an opportunity to speak with them will a determination be made as to what their status will be,'' INS spokeswoman Patricia Mancha said. The body of the dead man was taken to the medical examiner for an autopsy. Hospital officials Thursday identified him as Yudel Puig, believed to be 24. The INS declined to release the names of the survivors. Besides Fuentes and Ponzoa, family members identified them as the couple's 6-year-old son, Andy Fuentes; Puig's brother, Pavel, 28; Jacquelin Viera, 28; Lenin Iglesias Hernandez, identified as the pilot; his wife, Mercedes Martinez, 34; and their sons Erik, 13, and Danny, 7. Fuentes' brother, Rafael Fuentes, 30, of Miami, said he talked to Rodolfo in the hospital Wednesday. ``The escape ... was planned way before,'' he said. ``The bad part is that the pilot got lost. They were flying over the sea, when you don't see land after three hours, you get worried. The pilot realized he was running out of fuel so he stopped looking for land and started looking for a boat. They made four or five passes over the ship, they landed the plane next to the ship.'' The plane crashed in the southern Gulf of Mexico about 285 miles from Key West. The Coast Guard said the craft was heading west, toward Mexico, when it went down. A Panamanian-flagged freighter rescued the plane's passengers after the crash, and a doctor from a nearby cruise ship initially treated the survivors onboard the freighter. The FBI (news - web sites) said Wednesday the Cuban plane doesn't appear to have been hijacked, as Cuban officials said the pilot had reported. The agency is withholding a final determination until it questions the survivors. Once the FBI determines whether the plane was hijacked or flown from Cuba voluntarily, immigration officials will be able to determine if the survivors should qualify for asylum in the United States. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Cuban-American lawmakers from Miami, wrote to President Clinton (news - web sites) on Wednesday asking that all nine Cubans be granted asylum. ``Certainly they will face persecution in Cuba for their involvement in such a high-profile and risky attempt to flee the island,'' the letter said. A statement from the Cuban government, published Wednesday in the Communist Party daily Granma, said the pilot apparently first took off in the plane Tuesday from a small airstrip for what appeared to be a routine crop-dusting flight. It said he flew to another airport, picked up a group of people waiting at the end of a runway, then took off again. - ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Friday September 22, 2000 Cuba Protests Taking of Cuban Plane By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer HAVANA (AP) - The Cuban government called Thursday for a mass mobilization next week to protest American immigration policies it blames for this week's commandeering of a state-owned plane to fly a group of people out of the country. The announcement came at the end of an evening public affairs program examining the Tuesday flight of a crop-duster plane out of Cuba by a pilot who stopped to pick up his family and friends before leaving. Cubans will gather at 9 a.m. Monday to express ``their most energetic protest'' at the plaza constructed outside the U.S. Interests Section during the national campaign to repatriate 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, a moderator on the program said, reading a prepared statement. The United States had feared that controversy over Tuesday's flight would disrupt U.S.-Cuba migration talks set for Thursday, but the session was held in New York as scheduled. ``And to that extent, I could say we got as much out of these talks today as we realistically thought we would - or could - get,'' said U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield in New York. He said the two sides said they were committed to end the organized criminal smuggling of Cubans to the United States, but they remained at odds over other migration issues - including the separation of families. The Cuban government, however, said in its announcement that ``absolutely nothing'' had come out of the session. ``So no other alternative remains except to battle without truce against the brutal and murderous (Cuban Adjustment Act), which everyday draws a bit more Cuban blood,'' the statement added. It blasted what it called ``the continued cynical policies of the government of the United States to continue promoting and stimulating illegal departures'' of U.S.-bound Cubans. Cuba says the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act encourages its citizens to undertake risky journeys to the United States because the law allows any Cuban who reaches American soil to apply for U.S. residency. Most Cubans picked up at sea are repatriated. Washington accuses Havana of provoking the risky journeys by preventing Cubans who have U.S. visas from legally leaving the island. Cuban officials deny the charge. In the evening communique, the government also complained that American authorities ``have not even moved a finger'' to break up U.S.-based smuggling rings that charge Cubans thousands of dollars to be transported to the United States. The talks, being held at a New York office, were led by Brownfield and Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly and a confidant of President Fidel Castro. The most important item on the U.S. agenda was raised three weeks ago when the State Department officially protested that President Fidel Castro's government was preventing Cubans who have U.S. visas from legally leaving the island. As a result, would-be immigrants had to attempt high-risk escapes by boat or plane. ``Our point to them ... is if you close the route of legal migration to a bloc or a group of people, you are merely encouraging them to find alternative ways to depart,'' Brownfield said. It was unknown if Cuba intended to launch a new round of rallies, marches and other gatherings such as those that absorbed the nation during the seven-month campaign to repatriate Elian, who returned to Cuba in late June following a protracted custody battle. The crop duster at the center of the current dispute crashed Tuesday in the southern Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles west of Cuba, killing one of the 10 people on board. The others were rescued by a merchant ship and taken to Key West, Fla. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thursday September 21 , 2000 Cuba Says Crop-Duster Pilot 'Corrupted' by Friend By Andrew Cawthorne HAVANA (Reuters) - Havana said on Thursday the pilot of a plane that ditched into the sea in the latest dramatic bid to flee Cuba came from a pro-communist ``revolutionary'' family, but was led astray by a ``corrupt'' friend. In only its second statement on the affair, Cuba's ruling Communist Party pinned the blame on passenger Rodolfo Fuentes Fernandez, who was badly hurt when the Antonov An-2 crop-duster ran out of fuel and came down on Monday in the Gulf of Mexico. One person died from the impact, but a Panamanian freighter picked up nine survivors including three children. Fuentes, the worst-injured survivor, was airlifted immediately to a U.S. hospital, and the rest were taken to Florida for treatment late Wednesday. Communist Party daily Granma said in Thursday's statement that pilot Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernandez, who took the presumably state-owned, Soviet-built plane, had not previously stepped out of line with Cuban authorities. ``No criminal antecedents are known. His behavior at work was correct, and he comes from a revolutionary family. The very name they gave him at birth demonstrates that,'' Granma said. ``His intimate friend and school-mate, Rodolfo Fuentes Fernandez, a corrupt man of dubious morals and conduct, is considered to have exercised the damaging influence that led him to such an irresponsible act,'' the statement added. Although Cuban state security has clearly carried out a thorough investigation into the men's backgrounds, Granma gave no more personal details. Criticizing U.S. authorities for a lack of information, Granma named for the first time the 10 occupants of the plane, but said the identity of the person who died was still unknown. Confirming other versions, Granma said Iglesias tricked a colleague into getting off the plane, then invented a hijack story to confuse Cuban authorities, while he flew friends and family out of the western province of Pinar del Rio. ``Act Of Piracy'' ``Rather than a kidnap, it was an act of piracy,'' it said. Presumably heading toward Florida, Iglesias followed a confused route further west than intended during bad weather conditions, and ran out of fuel after an hour and 50 minutes. He circled the Panamanian ship to alert its crew, before ditching the plane into the sea. ``If it had not been for the presence of that ship, everyone would have died given the state of the weather and the sea,'' the Granma statement said. With the nine survivors now in the United States, Cuba reiterated its general position that all those fleeing the Caribbean island illegally should be repatriated, and criticized U.S. judicial lenience to Cuban migrants. Cuba has demanded the return of the nine survivors, but now they have touched American soil, they are presumed to be eligible for asylum. The presumed act of theft in taking the plane could, however, complicate matters. ``The absence of any punishment for acts of naval and air piracy, and for the hijacking of Cuban planes and boats sometimes by violence and murder, have constituted one of the greatest encouragements to illegal migration,'' Granma said. ``The unjustified non-return of a large number of intercepted people, the unpunished trafficking of migrants carried out from the coasts of the United States, create unfavorable conditions for the serene and constructive analysis of migration problems,'' it added. Those comments appear to be timed to coincide with Thursday's start of formal migration talks in New York between U.S. and Cuban officials. The flight of the crop-duster has been the most high- profile case in the decades-old Cuban migration problem since the end of the Elian Gonzalez affair in July. After surviving a shipwreck that killed his mother and 10 other illegal Cuban migrants, the 6-year-old boy became the focus of a 7-month custody dispute that ended in his return from Florida to Cuba. Under U.S. policy, those found at sea before touching American soil are normally sent back unless they can show they face persecution by President Fidel Castro's government. Cuba: Plane Hijack 'Piracy' By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer HAVANA (AP) - The taking of a state-owned plane with people aboard was an act of piracy that complicates migration relations with the United States, Cuba said Thursday as the two countries headed into talks in New York. ``Although the pilot spoke by radio of a hijacked plane with children aboard, more than a hijacking it was an act of piracy to commandeer an airplane destined to fumigate and fertilize fields of rice, a basic food for our people,'' the Communist Party daily Granma said in an official note Thursday. The plane crashed Tuesday in the southern Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles west of Cuba, killing one of the 10 people on board. The others were rescued by a merchant ship and taken to Key West, Fla. The Communist daily said the pilot, Angel Lenin Iglesias, did not have a criminal record, that he was a good worker and that he came from a ``revolutionary family.'' ``The very name he was given when he was born demonstrates that,'' the communique said. Instead it blamed the ``harmful influence'' of Rodolfo Fuentes Fernandez, the man seriously injured in the plane crash, ``for the undertaking of such an irresponsible action.'' Cuba-U.S. migration talks in New York were going ahead as scheduled Thursday and Friday, but the communique indicated that the plane incident was likely to be a subject of discussion. ``The worst part about this act is that it took place 48 hours before migration talks between the United States and Cuba,'' the government communique said. Cuba has protested in the past when the United States has failed to prosecute Cubans who have commandeered to the United States planes and boats with passengers aboard. Havana criticizes Washington for the Cuban Adjustment Act, a 1966 law it says encourages its citizens to undertake risky journeys to the United States because the law allows any Cuban who reaches American soil to apply for U.S. residency. Most Cubans picked up at sea are repatriated. Washington accuses Havana of provoking the risky journeys by preventing Cubans who have U.S. visas from legally leaving the island. Cuban officials deny the charge. Cuban Plane Crash Migrants Freed By Jim Loney MIAMI (Reuters) - Relatives and Cuban exiles welcomed a group of Cuban migrants to the United States after U.S. authorities granted them legal entry on Thursday following their dramatic rescue at sea after they fled communist Cuba in a stolen plane that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. government decision to allow nine crash survivors onto U.S. soil and then to free some of them delighted Cuban exiles but was certain to infuriate Cuba, which was holding talks on migration issues on Thursday and Friday in New York. One of the survivors, a six-year-old boy whose parents remained in a hospital recovering from injuries suffered in the crash, got his first taste of the United States when Cuban American relatives took him to a fast-food restaurant. The nine survivors -- a 21-year-old man was killed in the crash -- were rescued by the Panamanian cargo vessel Chios Dream on Tuesday after the small Soviet-built Antonov An-2 crop duster in which they left the island went down in the Yucatan Channel west of Cuba. Echoes Of Elian Lenin Iglesias, who worked as a crop-duster pilot, whisked the plane away from the western province of Pinar del Rio after picking up a group of family and friends. He ran low on fuel, searched for a ship to increase the chances of rescue and crashed down near the Chios Dream. Cuban President Fidel Castro's government called for the group to be repatriated, while in an echo of the tug-of-war earlier this year over child shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez, Cuban exiles demanded they be allowed to stay. Cuba's ruling Communist Party called the incident ``an act of piracy.'' But Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the exile group Democracy Movement, said the migrants' mode of escape, an apparently stolen government plane, should not be held against them in their bid for residency in the United States. ``They did not hijack the plane. They did not use any violence. They merely took a means of transportation to escape a dictatorship,'' he said. The FBI (news - web sites) interviewed all the survivors and spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said on Thursday the agency had determined there had not been a hijacking. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) spokeswoman Patricia Mancha said six of the survivors were given legal entry after interviews with INS officials. They were transferred from an immigration detention center to a Miami health clinic for mandatory medical checks. They were greeted in Miami's Little Havana by an enthusiastic group of Cuban Americans chanting ``Libertad, Libertad'' (liberty) and waving Cuban flags. The other three, the couple in a Key West, Florida, hospital, and their child, who is in the custody of an aunt, had not been interviewed but were widely expected to be allowed to stay in the United States. If U.S. authorities had decided they were dealing with a hijacking, it could have made it more difficult for the United States to allow the migrants into the country. Coast Guard officials said the decision to move the group to shore was made on medical grounds. Under migration accords between Cuba and the United States in 1994 and 1995 in the wake of an exodus of more than 35,000 ''rafters'' in the summer of 1994, Washington undertook to repatriate illegal Cuban migrants intercepted at sea, except in cases in which people would face persecution by authorities on their return. But those Cuban migrants who make it to shore are generally allowed to stay, a loophole denounced repeatedly by Havana. Cuba expert Wayne Smith, a former U.S. diplomat in Havana, said the decision to bring the crash survivors ashore was made ''because it is an election year and this is part of pandering to the Cuban American community.'' Cuban Exiles Speak Relatives of the migrants and leaders in the Cuban exile community were delighted with the U.S. government's decision to allow the migrants to come ashore. ``It is a just and humanitarian result,'' said Manny Diaz, a lawyer representing some of the survivors who was prominent in the battle over Elian Gonzalez, which ended in bitter defeat for the exiles in June when the child was sent by U.S. authorities back to Cuba to live with his father. The first of the nine to be evacuated to shore, Rodolfo Fuentes, was still at the hospital on Thursday with serious injuries to his head and neck. His wife Liliana Ponzoa, with an infected cut on her leg, was also at the hospital. Their son Andy Fuentes, 6, was taken on a shopping spree by relatives caring for him. The boy ate at a Burger King in Key West, was outfitted with a shiny new track suit and a pair of roller blades, and was pictured on local television playing with a basketball and other sports gear. Decision on Cuban Crash Victims Averted Clash By Jim Loney MIAMI (Reuters) - In the aftermath of the wrenching Elian Gonzalez affair, the U.S. government averted another emotional clash with Miami's Cuban exiles by allowing nine migrant crash survivors into the United States this week, exiles and analysts said Friday. Faced with a critical decision just 12 weeks after the Cuban castaway was returned to communist-ruled Cuba, Washington was presented with a convenient humanitarian rationale for allowing the survivors onto U.S. soil, analysts said. But the decision gave Cuban President Fidel Castro more ammunition in his continuing war against U.S. policy on Cubans fleeing the Caribbean island and raised the issue of whether presidential politics fed the Clinton administration's largess, they said. ``I think that given it's an election year and both candidates are interested in winning Florida ... at election time, every vote counts,'' said Uva de Aragon of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. The plight of the nine Cubans who fled Tuesday on a government crop-duster plane and then crashed into the Gulf of Mexico presented the administration with a dilemma before the wounds caused by the fierce seven-month custody clash over Elian Gonzalez were healed. Picked up by a Panamanian freighter, the nine migrants wanted refuge in the United States. But according to the U.S. ''wet foot/dry foot'' immigration policy, Cubans who do not set foot on U.S. soil are routinely sent back to Cuba. Rodolfo Fuentes, the migrant who suffered serious head and neck injuries in the crash, was immediately airlifted to Key West, Florida, for treatment, giving him the right to stay. But it was a U.S. Navy doctor's decision that the other eight, suffering lesser injuries, needed medical care as well, that provided Washington a ``humanitarian'' reason to bring them ashore. Fuentes and his wife needed hospital treatment but the others were checked and released quickly once on shore. Some analysts called the medical issue a ``convenient excuse'' for the administration to admit the survivors and appease Miami's 800,000-member Cuban American community, still bruised from the bitter battle over Elian, in which Washington sided with Havana to reunite the child with his father against the exiles who wanted him to stay in the United States. ``What it does is allows whatever healing that is taking place to continue,'' University of Miami political analyst Max Castro said. ``If they had been sent back, it would have been rubbing salt in the wounds.'' The move stood to win political points for Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites), who is neck-and-neck with Republican George W. Bush (news - web sites) in Florida, a key battleground state in the fight for the White House. At the moment, the Florida race is too close to call. At her weekly news briefing, Attorney General Janet Reno (news - web sites) said the call was made by the Coast Guard on medical grounds. ``I know of no political consideration whatsoever,'' she said. Exile leaders -- battered by U.S. public opinion during the Elian saga and stung by the boy's return to Cuba -- downplayed comparisons between the crash survivors and the castaway. ``The only similarity ... is that both cases are prompted by repressive conditions in a country where people would rather risk their lives than continue to live under dictatorship,'' said Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the exile group Democracy Movement. But de Aragon said the two cases had a common theme that weighed heavily in the migrants' favor -- family reunification. When Rodolfo Fuentes was rushed to Key West for treatment, he left his wife, Liliana Ponzoa, and 6-year-old son, Andy, on the freighter. To send them back to Cuba would have separated the family, perhaps for years. ``Had they sent the wife and kid back, they were doing the Elian story in reverse,'' de Aragon said. ``If Elian was sent back to be reunited with his father, they (U.S. government) would have to be consistent and reunite this wife with her husband, who really had to come here.'' Cuba called the escape in a stolen plane an act of piracy and demanded the migrants' return. Analysts said Castro was sure to brandish the incident at ongoing immigration talks between the two countries to step up pressure on Washington for changes to the Cuban Adjustment Act. Castro has long blamed the act, which gives special treatment to Cubans arriving in the United States, for encouraging Cubans to put themselves in danger with risky crossings of the Florida Straits. ``Castro will say this is another incident where the Cuban Adjustment Act is making people do dangerous things,'' UM's Max Castro said. ``This time they survived. Next time, he will say, you will have 10 people dead and you (Washington) will have blood on your hands.'' Cuba Urged on Family Reunification By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) - The United States has urged Cuba to support the reunification of divided families in the same way it championed the return of 6-year-old shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez to his Cuban father, a senior State Department official said. Citing Cuba's ``very heartening'' support for Elian, U.S. officials gave the Cuban delegation at the first U.S.-Cuban migration talks this year a list of divided families that want to be reunited in the United States, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield. Washington also urged President Fidel Castro's government to drop barriers to the legal departure of Cubans and to allow U.S. officials to register a new pool of Cubans interested in legally migrating to the United States, hopefully in 2001, he said after Thursday's talks. While there was no immediate response on these issues, Brownfield said both countries expressed a commitment to end the organized criminal smuggling of Cubans to the United States. ``Both sides expressed their commitment to enforce their laws to put a stop to this dangerous and totally unnecessary practice,'' he told a news conference. The U.S. assessment of the meeting was far more measured than a Cuban government communique which complained that ``absolutely nothing had come out of'' the meeting and called for a mass mobilization Monday to protest American immigration policies. The statement also blamed U.S. immigration policies for this week's commandeering of a state-owned crop-duster plane to fly a group of people out of Cuba. The crop duster crashed Tuesday in the southern Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles west of Cuba, killing one of the 10 people on board. The others were rescued by a merchant ship and taken to Key West, Fla. Cuba charges the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act encourages its citizens to undertake risky journeys to the United States because the law allows any Cuban who reaches American soil to apply for U.S. residency. Most Cubans picked up at sea are repatriated. ``So no other alternative remains except to battle without truce against the brutal and murderous (Cuban Adjustment Act), which everyday draws a bit more Cuban blood,'' the Cuban statement added. The talks are held under accords reached after the 1994 migration crisis when more than 30,000 rafters and boaters set out across the Florida Straits. Since January 1995, the agreement has enabled 133,000 Cubans to migrate legally to the United States. Talks are normally held twice a year, alternating between Havana and New York. The last talks were in Havana in December and the next round should have been in June but they were delayed by the Cubans during the controversy over Elian. Elian was returned from the United States to Juan Miguel Gonzalez, his father in Cuba, in late June after a seven-month legal battle with the boy's relatives in Miami. During the battle, the Cuban government argued the boy should be with his father and the family not split up. Brownfield indicated that the United States thought Cuba might cancel Thursday's meeting because of the crop-duster theft. ``They did not. And to that extent, I could say we got as much out of these talks today as we realistically thought we would - or could - get,'' he said. During the meeting, the U.S. government also questioned Cuba's demand for $600 in U.S. currency - the equivalent of an average Cuban's salary over three to four years - in exit fees to migrate, which means poor people can never afford to depart legally, Brownfield said. And it called for a ban on migration of medical personnel to be lifted. Cuba's delegation at the meeting was headed by National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon. Cuba Accuses U.S. of Immigration Policy Violations By Daniel Bases UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Cuba accused the United States Friday of violating an immigration agreement and called Americans pirates for picking up and sheltering Cuban migrants whose plane crashed in the Gulf of Mexico. Ricardo Alarcon, the powerful president of Cuba's national assembly, said the United States was ``on the side of international piracy'' by sending the Coast Guard to pick up nine survivors who crashed a state-owned Soviet-era crop duster in the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday in an aborted attempt to reach Florida. Alarcon was in New York Thursday and Friday for a round of talks with U.S. officials on immigration, but he said no progress was made and the talks were cut short a day. ``In terms of results, nothing that could be found,'' Alarcon told a news conference at Cuba's U.N. mission. ``We didn't get anywhere. They were not productive,'' a State Department official confirmed. According to Alarcon, the United States has accepted ``in principle'' another meeting on the immigration problem for Dec. 11 in Havana. Cuba expects a response from the United States by next week. The crash survivors were originally rescued by a Panamanian cargo ship and arrived in Miami for medical treatment on Wednesday night. One passenger died and the remaining nine are now being allowed to remain in the United States. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, after interviewing the rescued passengers, said the plane was not hijacked, contradicting Cuban claims that it was stolen. By sending the Coast Guard to pick up the survivors west of Cuba, and bring them back to American soil, Alarcon said Washington was in clear violation ``not only of the Cuban-U.S. immigration accords, but ... U.S. law and International law.'' A 1994 immigration agreement between the two nations calls for the U.S. to turn back most illegal ``rafters'' trying to reach American shores from Cuba, but allows in at least 20,000 immigrants a year who apply through legal channels. Alarcon criticized the U.S. for allowing illegal migrants to stay in America if they make it to dry land after crossing the Florida Straits, a policy he says encourages the human smuggling business and defies current immigration agreements between the two countries. Referring to what he called the U.S' ``wet feet-dry feet'' policy, Alarcon said: ``If you have on the one hand a policy of sending back to Cuba those interdicted at sea but admitting everybody that reaches U.S. soil, the logical conclusion is that you will try to evade the coast guard units in the straights and reach U.S. soil. ``That mechanism is a way to inviting people to risk their lives,'' Alarcon said. Alarcon brushed aside allegations that Cuba was preventing U.S. visa-holders from leaving the island legally by charging high fees. ``More than 110,000 Cubans have emigrated safely, legally, orderly, since the agreement we signed in 1994 and 1995. That is a fact,'' Alarcon insisted. Cuban officials say it costs approximately $600, which includes a plane ticket, for each applicant to obtain the necessary immigration documents from the government, as required by the U.S. The U.S. charges separate fees to applicants, depending on the kind of resident status application presented. Cuba: US Aided Air Piracy By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) - Cuba accused the United States on Friday of being complicit in ``a double act of piracy'' for bringing the Cubans who commandeered a state-owned plane that crashed in the Gulf of Mexico to Florida this week. Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba's National Assembly, said Cuba wanted those responsible returned, saying anyone who commits such a crime, ``should be treated like a delinquent, as a violator of international rights, as a thief, as an air pirate.'' In this case, the U.S. Coast Guard (news - web sites) ``went into the ocean, far from the U.S. border, to help a pirate finalize an operation of human contraband!'' Alarcon said at a press conference at Cuba's U.N. mission a day after U.S.-Cuban migration talks. The United States was ``complicit and sharing in the crime of international piracy,'' Alarcon charged. In fact, he said, ``now there is a double act of piracy.'' One person was killed Tuesday when the Cuban crop-duster with 10 people on board ditched in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles west of Cuba. A passing freighter rescued the nine survivors, who were later picked up by U.S. authorities and taken to Florida. On Thursday, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said all nine would be allowed to apply for residency in the United States. In the past, U.S. authorities have returned hijackers to Cuba for prosecution or have put them on trial, but the FBI (news - web sites) said Thursday that the flight was not a hijacking. The official Cuban daily Granma said the pilot, Angel Lenin Iglesias, did not have a criminal record and was a good worker from a ``revolutionary family.'' It blamed the ``harmful influence'' of passenger Rodolfo Fuentes Fernandez, who was seriously injured in the plane crash, ``for the undertaking of such an irresponsible action.'' The Cuban government called the theft of the state-owned plane an act of piracy - an act which Alarcon said should have automatically excluded those responsible from being allowed in the United States under U.S. law. ``An air pirate cannot even get a tourist visa to this country - much less work or immigrate - according to the law,'' Alarcon said. He said the U.S. refusal to respect its own laws would merely ``stimulate others to commit similar crimes.'' ``The United States has an international obligation to act responsibly,'' he said. Cuba has protested in the past when the United States has failed to prosecute Cubans who have commandeered planes and boats with passengers aboard to the United States. Havana criticizes Washington for the Cuban Adjustment Act, a 1966 law it says encourages its citizens to undertake risky journeys to the United States because the law allows any Cuban who reaches American soil to apply for U.S. residency. Washington accuses Havana of provoking the risky journeys by preventing Cubans who have U.S. visas from legally leaving the island. Cuban officials deny the charge. Alarcon said the issue was raised in migration talks Thursday in New York with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield - the first such talks in nearly a year. Alarcon dismissed Brownfield's complaint that Cuba blocks legal migration and charges $600 U.S. for exit visas, noting that the U.S. Interests Section in Havana charges each Cuban $300 just for the interview to request a U.S. visa. ``They may say `no' but they don't give your money back,'' Alarcon said. He also downplayed Brownfield's hopeful outlook about the talks, saying he saw little progress and little hope for progress if the United States doesn't change its policies that encourage smuggling operations and risky flights. ``To see positive developments is very difficult with any glasses you may have, even the rosiest glasses,'' Alarcon said. Alarcon did, however, propose that a new round of talks take place in Havana on Dec. 11 - which he said the United States accepted in principle. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Friday, 22 September, 2000 New tension over Cuban immigrants The custody dispute over Elian did nothing for relations By Iain Haddow in Miami The issue of Cuban immigrants trying to reach the United States is a constant source of tension between the two countries. Relations were strained recently during the highly emotional custody dispute involving the six-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez. It takes little to upset relations between Cuba and the United States, especially when it comes to migration policy. Cuban protesters show their anger over recent immigration cases Hundreds of Cubans try to make it to the US every year - a distance of less than 150km (95 miles) at its narrowest point. Often they travel on makeshift rafts, but, increasingly they are smuggled over in high-power speedboats, and, as the latest incident has shown, they are occasionally willing to commandeer an aeroplane to make the journey. In an attempt to regulate the flow of illegal immigration, which reached a peak of 35,000 in 1994, the US and Cuban authorities reached a series of agreements. No stop to flow Washington began giving 20,000 visas to Cuba every year for its nationals to enter the US. It also gave an undertaking to send back any Cubans picked up at sea. In practice, the agreement has reduced the numbers of those leaving the island, but it has not stopped the flow. The Cubans say the Americans are still encouraging people to risk their lives in dangerous crossings over the Florida Straits. In particular, they object to a US law under which Cubans who arrive on US soil are automatically given the right to stay - regardless of whether they travelled illegally. In response, the Americans say Havana is to blame for the high numbers of refugees. Recently, the US said it was concerned that those with valid visas were being charged exorbitant sums of money for exit permits, and that in several cases, some people were simply told they could not leave. Cuban Pilot Says He Ditched Plane Escape: Lost aviator, with nine others aboard, circled freighter before crashing in sea, he recounts. Refugees will likely be allowed to stay in U.S. By MIKE CLARY, Times Staff Writer MIAMI--Lost, confused and running low on fuel, the pilot of the stolen crop duster deliberately crashed the aging biplane next to a freighter in the Gulf of Mexico. Seconds later Pabel Puig and his younger brother Judel were in the water, pulling the other eight Cubans out of the wreckage. The Soviet-built biplane floated for a few minutes, and everyone--including three children--got out. "Go! Swim for the boat," Judel, 23, shouted to Pabel, looking toward the lifeboat that had been lowered by the cargo ship's crew. Pabel Puig, 28, turned and swam for the boat, just yards away, he said Thursday. "And when I turned around, my brother was gone. I couldn't see him." Through tears, Puig offered that dramatic account of Tuesday's plane crash off the west coast of Cuba after U.S. immigration officials released him and five other survivors to Miami relatives. Neither Puig, pilot Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernandez, their two sons or schoolteacher Jacqueline Viera spoke directly to reporters who gathered to see them outside a county refugee health center in Little Havana. Puig's account was related by his father, Isidro Puig, and the family's attorney, Ralph E. Fernandez. "He is overwhelmed, barely able to speak," said Isidro Puig, a Hialeah mechanic. "This is bittersweet. I lost a son, but one has been saved. I am happy and sad at the same time." Two other survivors of the crash, Rodolfo Fuentes, 36, and his wife, Liliana Ponzoa, remained in a Key West hospital Thursday. Their 6-year-old son, Andy, is in the care of relatives there. Although the release of the Cubans by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service strongly indicates that they will be permitted to remain in the United States--as are most Cubans who reach land--that decision has not been made, U.S. officials said. Nor is it clear whether the pilot, who worked as a crop duster in Pinar del Rio province, will face air piracy charges, which the Cuban government said are warranted. A report Thursday in Granma, the official Communist Party daily, called the flight "more than a hijacking, it was air piracy to commandeer an airplane destined to fumigate and fertilize fields of rice, a basic food for our people." The defection is sure to be on the table today in New York as representatives of the Cuban government and the Clinton administration begin a second day of previously scheduled immigration talks. "The worst part about this act is that it took place hours before migration talks" between the two nations, the Cuban government said in Granma. The decision to flee Cuba in the single engine Antonov An-2 was at least days in the making, although the elder Puig said he had no knowledge that his sons were planning to defect. He last saw them seven years ago when he visited Cuba. After tricking his co-pilot to get out of the plane, Iglesias picked up the others on the far side of the Herradura airport in western Cuba and took off. But without charts or radar, Fuentes apparently became disoriented over the Gulf of Mexico. He radioed the Havana tower to report that he had been hijacked and asked for the coordinates of his location. But, according to Pabel Puig, Cuban authorities refused to help. "They told us to crash into the sea," Pabel Puig said, according to Fernandez, who met with the survivors inside the Miami clinic where they were undergoing medical exams. And crash the plane is what Iglesias did, after circling the freighter Chios Dream several times to alert the crew. The survivors, along with the body of Judel Puig, were taken aboard the freighter, which then headed for Key West. The Coast Guard took eight of the Cubans off the freighter Wednesday. Fuentes, the most seriously injured, earlier had been airlifted off the Chios Dream. An autopsy was to determine the cause of Judel Puig's death. Fernandez and colleague Roberto Villasante, who specializes in aviation law, said that, if Cuban air traffic controllers did refuse to help, they could be in violation of the Chicago Convention of the International Civil Aviation Treaty. That convention requires air traffic controllers to assist all aircraft in distress. "We fully intend to follow up on that," said Fernandez. Meanwhile, in Key West the Americanization of Andy Fuentes had begun. He was taken to Burger King for lunch, outfitted in a new red track suit and later was seen on local television trying out new in-line skates. Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Friday, September 22, 2000 Cuban Pilot Says He Ditched Plane Escape: Lost aviator, with nine others aboard, circled freighter before crashing in sea, he recounts. Refugees will likely be allowed to stay in U.S. By MIKE CLARY, Times Staff Writer MIAMI--Lost, confused and running low on fuel, the pilot of the stolen crop duster deliberately crashed the aging biplane next to a freighter in the Gulf of Mexico. Seconds later Pabel Puig and his younger brother Judel were in the water, pulling the other eight Cubans out of the wreckage. The Soviet-built biplane floated for a few minutes, and everyone--including three children--got out. "Go! Swim for the boat," Judel, 23, shouted to Pabel, looking toward the lifeboat that had been lowered by the cargo ship's crew. Pabel Puig, 28, turned and swam for the boat, just yards away, he said Thursday. "And when I turned around, my brother was gone. I couldn't see him." Through tears, Puig offered that dramatic account of Tuesday's plane crash off the west coast of Cuba after U.S. immigration officials released him and five other survivors to Miami relatives. Neither Puig, pilot Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernandez, their two sons or schoolteacher Jacqueline Viera spoke directly to reporters who gathered to see them outside a county refugee health center in Little Havana. Puig's account was related by his father, Isidro Puig, and the family's attorney, Ralph E. Fernandez. "He is overwhelmed, barely able to speak," said Isidro Puig, a Hialeah mechanic. "This is bittersweet. I lost a son, but one has been saved. I am happy and sad at the same time." Two other survivors of the crash, Rodolfo Fuentes, 36, and his wife, Liliana Ponzoa, remained in a Key West hospital Thursday. Their 6-year-old son, Andy, is in the care of relatives there. Although the release of the Cubans by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service strongly indicates that they will be permitted to remain in the United States--as are most Cubans who reach land--that decision has not been made, U.S. officials said. Nor is it clear whether the pilot, who worked as a crop duster in Pinar del Rio province, will face air piracy charges, which the Cuban government said are warranted. A report Thursday in Granma, the official Communist Party daily, called the flight "more than a hijacking, it was air piracy to commandeer an airplane destined to fumigate and fertilize fields of rice, a basic food for our people." The defection is sure to be on the table today in New York as representatives of the Cuban government and the Clinton administration begin a second day of previously scheduled immigration talks. "The worst part about this act is that it took place hours before migration talks" between the two nations, the Cuban government said in Granma. The decision to flee Cuba in the single engine Antonov An-2 was at least days in the making, although the elder Puig said he had no knowledge that his sons were planning to defect. He last saw them seven years ago when he visited Cuba. After tricking his co-pilot to get out of the plane, Iglesias picked up the others on the far side of the Herradura airport in western Cuba and took off. But without charts or radar, Fuentes apparently became disoriented over the Gulf of Mexico. He radioed the Havana tower to report that he had been hijacked and asked for the coordinates of his location. But, according to Pabel Puig, Cuban authorities refused to help. "They told us to crash into the sea," Pabel Puig said, according to Fernandez, who met with the survivors inside the Miami clinic where they were undergoing medical exams. And crash the plane is what Iglesias did, after circling the freighter Chios Dream several times to alert the crew. The survivors, along with the body of Judel Puig, were taken aboard the freighter, which then headed for Key West. The Coast Guard took eight of the Cubans off the freighter Wednesday. Fuentes, the most seriously injured, earlier had been airlifted off the Chios Dream. An autopsy was to determine the cause of Judel Puig's death. Fernandez and colleague Roberto Villasante, who specializes in aviation law, said that, if Cuban air traffic controllers did refuse to help, they could be in violation of the Chicago Convention of the International Civil Aviation Treaty. That convention requires air traffic controllers to assist all aircraft in distress. "We fully intend to follow up on that," said Fernandez. Meanwhile, in Key West the Americanization of Andy Fuentes had begun. He was taken to Burger King for lunch, outfitted in a new red track suit and later was seen on local television trying out new in-line skates. Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Saturday September 23, 2000 Cubans Survive Perilous Journey By JAIME HERNANDEZ, and ADRIAN SAINZ Associated Press Writers MIAMI (AP) - The pilot's view from the sputtering, stolen vintage crop-duster wasn't encouraging: endless, swelling sea and gray sky. America was not in sight. The fuel was almost gone. But the 10 people on the pirate flight out of Cuba had one thing left: faith. So they prayed as their plane headed into the water of the stormy Gulf of Mexico west of their island homeland. All but one survived and realized their dream to come to America. While the journey was extraordinary, it is a trip regularly taken by Cubans trying to escape their communist country. Many don't survive. Just last year, 11 people drowned when their boat sank off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The only survivors were two adults - and Elian Gonzalez. The airplane flight began early Tuesday in Pinar Del Rio, a province west of Havana. Lenin Iglesias Hernandez, 35, left the home he shared with his extended family in the town of Los Palacios, supposedly heading for his job flying crop dusting planes. A little later, his wife, 31-year-old Mercedes Martinez, left the house with their sons, Erik, 13, and Danny, 7. They were going to Havana, a sister-in-law said later. They didn't carry suitcases and there was no indication they would be gone for an extended time. Later, Hernandez landed at Pinar del Rio's Herradura Airport, where his wife, their sons and six others were waiting. Hernandez had plotted the escape because of problems with an uncle who is active in the communist party and was a famous commander in President Fidel Castro's army during Cuba's revolution four decades ago. They took off in the aging Antonov AN-2 Colt crop duster at 8:45 a.m. As they flew out of the mountainous area, air traffic controllers in the Cuban capital lost contact with the plane shortly after 9 a.m. By then, the controllers had already told the Miami tower that the plane was northbound, across the Florida Straits. The refugees' destination was Miami, but shortly into the flight Hernandez realized they were running out of fuel. They also were lost, ending up far to the west of their planned route north. Panicked, he radioed Havana air traffic control and asked for a Miami-Key West radio frequency. Havana radioed back: ``crash in the sea.'' ``They knew why we wanted the frequency,'' Hernandez said. By 10 a.m., two Florida Air National Guard F-15C fighters and an AWACS plane diverted from a training mission were searching for the missing plane. In the meantime, Hernandez spotted a speck on the horizon, the Panamanian merchant ship Chios Dream. ``Two minutes didn't pass ... Lenin saw a boat far away,'' survivor Rudolfo Fuentes recalled, the memory raising goose bumps on his arms. ``God put that boat there.'' Hernandez flew over the freighter repeatedly until they were noticed. Then, before the plane ditched in the water, the Cubans took off their shirts and shoes and put their heads between their legs. ``We prayed to God and we landed,'' Fuentes said. The plane jolted across the rough water, with waves 4 to 6 feet high produced by Tropical Storm Helene. Fuentes suffered a concussion. A medical examiner would later determine that Ludel Puig, 21, suffered a fatal head injury during the landing. After the plane came to a halt, the captain of the Chios Dream, Konstantinos Kalaitgis, watched the survivors scramble out of the fuselage. ``People go all over the place,'' Kalaitgis said. The pilot's wife couldn't swim, so Fuentes held her up with his left arm. Two women and three children clung to a lone life ring that was losing air and to one of the plane's wings. The children - ages 6, 7 and 13 - didn't suffer a scratch. The plane slowly sank, eventually sliding nose-up beneath the waves some 285 miles southwest of Key West. It took the Chios Dream 45 minutes to reach the survivors. Because of the rough sea, they stayed on board the ship until Wednesday night before being transferred to a Coast Guard cutter. They were taken to Key West, where Fuentes and his wife, who suffered a severe leg cut, were admitted to a hospital. Their son stayed with them. The rest were taken to Miami, where they were given permission to apply for U.S. residency. Fuentes and his family were given temporary humanitarian parole pending later processing. On Friday, Fuentes and his wife, 35-year-old Liliana Ponzoa, left the hospital. With 6-year-old son Andy in tow, they went to St. Mary Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church in Key West to pray. ``I had so much faith that I knew we were going to live. I was saying 'calm down, calm down,' to the others,'' Ponzoa said. ``Thank God we're alive.'' EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press Writer Anita Snow in Havana contributed to this story. Cubans recount harrowing flight, sea ordeal Survivors tearfully remember one who died BY SANDRA MARQUEZ GARCIA AND PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS smarquez@herald.com In the moments before they crashed into the sea, the people aboard the Russian biplane fleeing Cuba acted quickly to save themselves. The three children were placed at the back of the aircraft, instructed to remove their clothing and shoes and to place their heads between their knees. The adults, seven of them, began to scan the horizon for a ship. Within moments, passenger Pabel Puig spotted a fleck on the horizon, the Panamanian freighter that would be their salvation. The small Russian-made crop-duster circled the vessel at least six times before a sailor on board responded to their emergency signal by waving his arms. The story, recounted by some of the nine survivors Friday, brought tears to the eyes of all who remembered it. Seated side by side in wheelchairs at a Key West hospital, Liliana Ponzoa, 36, and her husband Rodolfo Fuentes, 36, spoke publicly for the first time Friday about their risky escape from Cuba that left one friend dead. Ponzoa sobbed as the couple described how their group of close friends became lost in the air and had to make a deliberate decision to land in the water. ``We had enough fuel to go to Miami two or three times,'' Fuentes said, his head partially shaved to reveal a long scar with fresh stitches. ``Quite simply, we got lost. We knew that it would be impossible to reach land.'' A dazed looking Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernández, the pilot of the plane, said they tried to radio the Havana tower for directions to Key West and Miami International Airport. He never radioed to report he was being ``kidnapped,'' as Cuban air traffic controllers claimed when the plane disappeared. ``We asked for the Miami tower radio frequency -- for the signal, for the bearings,'' he said at a press conference at the Monty's restaurant in Coconut Grove. ``Havana did not respond. They knew why we wanted the frequency, but we never said the plane was being hijacked.'' Fuentes credited Iglesias Hernández's skillful handling of the aircraft for their survival. ``If we hadn't landed well, we wouldn't have survived,'' he said. Once at sea, everyone immediately exited the aircraft. It would be nearly an hour before rescuers arrived, survivors said. Ponzoa said she clung to the plane's single life preserver with three children and another adult. She was overcome after the crash by a sense of ``total tranquillity'' and a powerful faith in God that helped save her life, she said. ``I had such a strong faith that I knew I would survive,'' she said, her face shadowed by red bruises and her ankle showing a deep gash. Her 6-year-old son Andy, the youngest of the group, was in the center of the life preserver. Iglesias' two children and teacher Jacqueline Viera held on for support. ``I knew the air was evaporating from my son's life preserver,'' she said. ``I didn't tell anyone because I did not want to cause a panic.'' Nearby, Fuentes was engaged in a struggle of his own. Mercedes Martínez Paredes, Iglesias' wife, did not know how to swim. He was keeping her afloat with a single hand while treading water with the other and coaxing her to be calm. As time wore on, the toll of his injuries began to wear him down. ``I could hear my husband's calls that he couldn't go on anymore, that Mercedes would drown,'' Ponzoa said. Fuentes said he didn't know that one person, Judel Puig, had drowned until the Panamanian freighter arrived to save them. Pilot Iglesias' eyes filled with tears when he was asked about Puig on Friday. ``I didn't see him die,'' he said, gulping. ``I did the only thing I could do when we began running out of fuel. I landed in the sea.'' His wife was Judel Puig's aunt. ``The plane took a little while to submerge,'' Martínez Paredes said. ``We were all in the water. I looked around and I saw my nephew was helping my husband. My husband was injured and he was helping him stay afloat. ``And then in a few minutes the freighter was there and I realized my nephew had died, or was drowning. We don't really know what happened to him.'' Isidro Puig, father of the dead man, has asked U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for help in bringing Judel Puig's mother from Cuba to Florida to attend her son's funeral and burial services, not yet scheduled. The mother lives in Los Palacios, more than 60 miles southwest of Havana. Iglesias said the decision by the group of friends to flee Cuba ``was a plan made by everybody.'' ``We all agreed on it. In my own case, I did it because of political problems,'' he said. At that point, Irving Gonzalez, the family's lawyer, stepped in to say his client would not say more about the departure. All the survivors repeatedly thanked the many people who helped to save them and offered medical treatment. Ponzoa and Fuentes were released from the hospital Friday and headed to Miami to join relatives. But their first priority was to make good on a promise they made by stopping at St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church. ``They came to give thanks to God because they promised that if they survived, the first thing they would do would be to go to church,'' said Arturo Cobo, a Cuban exile leader in Key West who was driving them to Miami. |
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FREEDOM 90 by George Michael I won't let you down Heaven knows I was just a young boy I think there's something you should know All we have to do now Heaven knows we sure had some fun boy I think there's something you should know All we have to do now Well it looks like the road to heaven That's what you get I say that's what you get That's what you get for changing your mind And after all this time I'll hold on to my freedom |
Closed-door trial begins for Dade residents imprisoned in Cuba
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@herald.com
Ernestino Abreu Horta and Vicente Martínez Rodríguez are aging exiles, fighting poor health, Fidel Castro and 26-year prison sentences.
The two Miami-Dade men went on trial in Cuba Thursday, accused of fomenting a revolution. Cuban prosecutors began the closed-door trial by requesting 26-year prison sentences for two men -- ages 75 and 66 -- who they say entered the country illegally with a cache of arms.
The pair decided two years ago to spend their autumn years in Cuba to proselytize about democracy and free elections. Members of a quasi-commando group known as the Movement of Revolutionary Recovery, they boarded a boat and headed for Pinar del Río, ready for a revolt.
``I knew it wasn't a good idea, but a good cause,'' said Secundino Blanco Martínez, Vicente's brother. ``Causes can either be taken on or dropped. He took it on.''
The landing was planned for about a year, after the FBI seized two MRR boats carrying weapons and ammunition a few miles off Marathon. Their presence in Cuba was detected immediately. The two men and Martínez's nephews who met up with them in Cuba took to the hills to avoid the manhunt.
Abreu, a 75-year-old South Dade engineer, and Martínez, a 66-year-old Sweetwater truck driver, were caught nine days later. They've been in jail ever since.
POOR CONDITIONS
Supporters say the two have been imprisoned in a variety of sick wards and in roach-infested cells for violent criminals.
``They went there without arms to spread the word that Cuba had to be democratic, that Cuba needed elections,'' said Roberto Rodriguez de Aragon, of the Cuban Patriotic Junta. ``Fidel Castro believes in nothing and nobody. The day he needs something he can buy with their freedom, he'll release them.
``In the meantime, they put them in sick wards so they can die of contagious diseases and the government can say they didn't kill them.''
Abreu is an agronomist and developer who headed the Cuban Patriotic Junta, an influential exile organization. He was one eight exile leaders who met with President Clinton at the White House in 1996 after the shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes.
Martínez is a former member of the revolutionary army who was jailed a year after turning his back on Castro.
`TAKING ACTION'
``There are many people who talk a lot about changing the politics in Cuba,'' Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights said from Havana. ``There is a right to only talk. What's notable is that these men were talking and at the same time taking action. They should be respected for that.''
Sánchez said the Cuban government denied his group's plea to hire lawyers for the men. Instead, they were assigned designated lawyers to be paid with U.S. dollars, Sánchez said.
``It doesn't offer a lot of guarantees,'' he said.
Observers hope the men will be released because of their age and health concerns. A State Department official said because the Cuban government does not recognize dual citizenship, the prisoners have been denied access to the U.S. consulate.
Thousands of signatures were collected in Miami demanding their release. Petitions were presented to Abreu's wife and daughter, who flew to Cuba for the trial.
``Castro laughs at these gestures,'' Rodríguez said.
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