The Drama of Cubans in Central America: Culprits & Accomplices
By Haroldo Dilla Alfonso
HAVANA TIMES — The drama Cubans are going through in Central America is a multifaceted issue that cannot be summed up with a simple explanation. Therefore, I won’t attempt to offer an exhaustive explanation here and limit myself to highlighting what I consider to be the most shameful aspect of this situation: the complicity of the Cuban government and those who remain silent about the incident.
The painful image of Cubans fleeing from Nicaragua’s riot police, carrying helpless children, beaten with nightsticks and enveloped by acrid tear gas, is but the publicized fragment of a story that has been unfolding for months and years.
Having lost all hope in Cuba, unable to secure visas to travel to the United States and fearful that the Cuban Adjustment Act will soon be repealed, our compatriots are trying to reach US soil through all imaginable means.
They continue to do so through the traditional route afforded by the Strait of Florida, which is always dangerous and heavily monitored. They increasingly try their luck with passages to the Dominican Republic, in attempts to reach Puerto Rico through the perilous Paso de la Mona, but Dominican authorities have blocked this corridor and have begun to deport them. Mexico proves as impenetrable – or more so – than the United States itself.
As a result of this, for months, Cubans have been attempting to reach the Rio Grande by cutting across jungles and wastelands, leaving from Ecuador, where entry requirements are laxer. This is the story of desperate people – there’s talk of hundreds who undertake the journey every day – who confront all manner of harsh conditions, physical and moral abuse, robberies, kidnappings and rape, people who disappear, sometimes for good, and whose families try to track down using the Internet.
To reach the United States, Cubans must cut across half a dozen South and Central American countries, all of which, to a greater or lesser extent, have granted these caravans safe passage – de jure or de facto – for a few days, enough to see these people head out the country through the next border.
But, all of a sudden, the Nicaraguan government, under Daniel Ortega, decided to block their passage through their territory. They did so by force, sending a detachment of riot police carrying many lethal toys to meet the Cubans. A Cuban woman described the situation succinctly: “they launched tear gas at us, they beat us, they beat the pregnant women, the children, we’ve been severely mistreated, and they even shot at us. We’re not doing well, we need people to help us.”
It is very hard to believe that Daniel Ortega is playing strictly legal cards. He’s never done so, and he’s not doing so now, not in a country, incidentally, that has always oscillated between illegality and the absence of law altogether, to the benefit of an increasingly rich elite (of which the Ortega family has become a distinguished member) and the detriment of a majority that barely gets by.
Ortega is using Cubans to fan the flames of a conflict he has sparked off at the border, in connection with a few strips of land he claims belong to Nicaragua and not Costa Rica, land which would favor the construction of an inter-oceanic canal financed by China. So he accuses Costa Rica of doing what everyone has been doing over recent months: letting Cubans pass through.
Daniel Ortega, however, is one of the Cuban government’s prodigal step-sons. He is a wealthy and corrupt leader who emerged from the ruins of a revolution that overthrew one of the worst dictatorships in the continent, and for which thousands of Nicaraguans gave their lives. He gets many things from Cuba, including medical brigades that help prop up his impoverished health system, and he himself receives first-rate medical attention, free of charge, for a disease rumored to be degenerative. He also enjoys less altruistic services, such as security agents who watch his back and protect him from his many enemies. It would therefore be naïve to think that Ortega is beating Cubans down with nightsticks without the support of the Cuban government.
A political enterprise that proves highly profitable for Raul Castro’s government is being developed on the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. It is an international problem that can easily be linked to the Cuban Adjustment Act and that, therefore, could prompt the United States to reconsider the law and, with it, the entire legal framework of the blockade/embargo. The lifting of the embargo entails a unique opportunity for Cuba’s political elite, in the process of becoming a new bourgeoisie. If, to achieve this, they have to present the world with desperate Cubans – so desperate they are willing to defy jaguars, coyotes and armored guards – that is the lesser of two evils. The Cuban government has long been oblivious as to the meaning of political prudency.
Let no one be too surprised by this. The Cuban government has always toyed with the fate of its migrants. It regards migration as a kind of political wildcard it can use to justify oppressive policies, and as a petty cash box it can rely on to clean up the economic mess it has caused.
It is quite possible, let us not forget, that the trips and businesses of Cuba’s elite and its children – recall Mariela Castro’s European tours and Antonio Castro’s Greek adventures – may today be financed by the remittances and steep consular payments that Cuban workers around the world are transferring to this pimp State. What it does today is what it has always done: beat down desperate émigrés to secure collateral benefits.
What we are seeing isn’t something that can be filtered by ideology or politics. It is not a dilemma between the Left or Right, pro or anti-imperialists. It is a dilemma having to do with the humane and inhumane. Faced with such a dilemma – by the image of women fleeing from the police, carrying their horrified children – I can assume no other position than that of absolute condemnation of the Cuban government, for its complicity in this assault on its citizens, citizens it is supposedly duty-bound to protect.
As for the others, those who remain silent or muster mere, perfunctory sympathies, I don’t even condemn them. I simply feel very, very sorry for them.
This is the statement of the Cuban government on this situation.
http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2015-11-18/ministry-of-foreign-relations-statement-on-migratory-policy
You raise several valid points. In doing so you strengthen the comparison to the refugee crisis currently unfolding in Europe. Tens of thousands of migrants are arriving on the shores of Greece, Italy & Spain and from there making their way on foot to northern Europe. As in Europe, where there has been a lack of communication & co-ordination between countries on how to deal with the flood of refugees, there has been a lack of communication & co-ordination between the US, Cuba, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the several other countries through which the rising numbers of Cuban migrants are passing.
President Obama has been making speeches about the need for Europe to improve their handling of the refugees. He has pledged the US will bring in 10,000 refugees from the Middle East over the next 12 months. But he has been significantly silent on the subject of the sudden upsurge of Cuban refugees leaving Cuba and trying to enter the US. My guess is that’s because the refugees are inconvenient to his narrative that his new policy of normalization with Cuba will improve conditions on the island. It’s clear now the opposite has resulted and more Cubans than ever want to leave.
Fair enough, Dani. Oretga is not a dictator. He’s just a thoroughly corrupt elected politician, …and a creep. Nicaragua is a member of FTAA and of ALBA; having a foot in both camps is helpful. Unlike the puppet Maduro, Ortega is not a complete lackey of Raul, but when it comes to dealing with Cuban migrants, you can bet he takes advice from Havana.
The article does not question Costa Rica’s action in letting 1,600 people cross its border without contacting the Nicaraguan authorities. It’s a pretty reasonable conclusion that either they were (a) careless or (b) being provocative. Given that the Cubans appeared to be on foot, where were they going to go once they crossed the frontier given that it is nearly 400km to the next border?
International law expert Mauricio Herdocia said that “the government of Costa Rica should have called Nicaragua and consulted about what it wanted to do about this because a country should be very careful in allowing transit of migrants without legal documentation to third countries, above all if they are accompanied by migrant smugglers.” He added that if Nicaragua were to allow passage through the country it would have to also consult with the government of the United States to see if it was ready to accept them in its territory. “This shows,” he stated, “the fact that the lack of dialogue between Costa Rica and Nicaragua once again is generating a conflict situation that could have been avoided and resolved to the benefit of these people who also merit humanitarian treatment.”
Daniel Ortega, like Michael Manley in Jamaica, had to capitulate to the Empire and retain neo-liberal capitalism in order to either gain or stay in power after trying and failing to revolutionize his economy.
Ortega is a sell-out and little but rhetoric remains of the Sandinista that he was.
Some 54 years ago the U.S. imposed the embargo on Cuba to impoverish and immiserate the country into a counter revolution . They succeeded in impoverishing the country severely but unlike the morons in the U.S. media and those who rely on it for their “facts” , they failed to convince the Cuban people that it is the fault of THEIR government .
So that “failed” policy grinds on and the impoverished Cubans like the impoverished ( by failed free enterprise capitalism in their home countries.) Salvadorans, Mexicans, Guatemalans are making their way toward an unwelcoming El Norte by the millions because it is the richest country on Earth.
It’s not a mystery.
The United States ; the Empire has enforced neo-liberal free enterprise capitalism upon the hemisphere sine well before the turn of the 20th century and massive flight from the resulting poverty is a natural result.
Of course it’s always easier to blame the victims of U.S. imperialism frothier plight rather than admit a very unpleasant truth; that U.S. imperialism causes poverty and mass migration.
So you are using the US definition of dictator – ie someone who is elected fairly in a free, contested election but opposes US policy (even if only slightly). Nicaragua is an ally of Cuba (though not that close), but that doesn’t make them lackeys. For example, they are part of the FTAA which is anathema to Cuba and Venezuela. People aren’t going to take your views seriously when you come out with things like this.
The allegations of abuse may be true but they have never been proven in a court of law. You are entitled to your views, but shouldn’t state it as if it were fact.
The Cuban Adjustment Act is not the cause of the problem. Cubans would still want to escape the Castro prison, whatever the US law was.
Not only is Daniel Ortega a thug, a dictator, a tool of the Castro dictatorship, he’s also a child molester. His own step-daughter has accused him of years of incestuous sexual assault. Creep.
I echo Haroldo’s sentiments. At what point will the Castro oligarchy finally admit they have failed? Frankly, it costs Obama very little political capital to acknowledge the failure of US policy to isolate Cuba. After all, he wasn’t even born when Castro became a dictator. He easily blames previous administrations. However in Cuba, the same egomaniacs who created the mess that Cuba is in today are largely still in charge. There’s nobody to blame but themselves. That’s what makes the US embargo and the Cuban Adjustment Act so convenient. Of course the Castros are complicit in the inhumane treatment of these Cubans in Costa Rica attempting to escape Castro tyranny. Ortega wouldn’t pass gas without the Castros approval. It’s sad to see people suffer like this.