Miami plans big party when Castro dies

[Jimmy2]

Miami plans big party when Castro dies Mon Jan 29, 10:41 AM ET

MIAMI - The city of Miami is planning an official celebration at the Orange Bowl whenever Cuban president Fidel Castro dies.

Discussions by a committee appointed earlier this month by the city commission to plan the event have even covered issues such as a theme to be printed on T-shirts, what musicians would perform, the cost and how long the celebration would last.

Such a gathering has long been part of the city's plan for Castro's death, but firming up the specifics has been more urgent since Castro became ill last summer and turned over power to his brother, Raul.

City Commissioner Tomas Regalado, a Cuban American, came up with the idea of using the Orange Bowl, noting that the stadium was the site of a speech by President Kennedy in 1961 promising a free Cuba, and that in the 1980s it served as a camp for refugees from the Mariel boatlift from Cuba.

Jimmy2 input ( i think the Embargo to hurts the people of Cuba this is why i think the people in Florida (Cuban) are selfish in a way and are blind.Their are no winners here and i think if the embargo was lifted long ago .It would have been easier for the people there and for them to have a better life.And the Embargo was to hurt the Gov which it has not in 40 + year another failed US policy).

"(Castro) represents everything bad that has happened to the people of Cuba for 48 years," Regalado told The Miami Herald for a story in Monday editions. "There is something to celebrate, regardless of what happens next."

Former state Rep. Luis Morse stressed the need for an uplifting theme for the party — one not preoccupied with a human being's passing.

Critics have accused the city of dictating where people should party, with many preferring to celebrate on the streets of Little Havana. The city says the Orange Bowl celebration would not preclude that.

"This is not a mandatory site," Regalado said of the Orange Bowl. "Just a place for people to gather."

Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the Miami-based Democracy Movement organization, worries about how a party to celebrate a man's death would be perceived by people outside the Cuban exile community.

Sanchez also pointed out that, even after Castro dies, his communist government still will be in place.

"The notion of a big party, I think, should be removed from all this," Sanchez said. "Although everybody will be very happy that the dictator cannot continue to oppress us himself, I think everybody is still very sad because there are still prisons full of prisoners, many people executed, and families divided."

[DrAlejandro]

I'll be there front and center! My family is cuban and my grandfather was a political prisoner in some of the most horrible conditions imaginable for 15 years just for speaking his mind and working agains the castro government. It wont solve any problems right away but it will be a huge weight off of a lot of peoples minds in miami and will be a small victory for a lot of people who's lives were terribely affected by this horrible man.

[Tampa1257]

With all due respect to anyone that suffered, I think this is in particularly poor taste. In any war, the spoils of victory go to the winners and the agoney of defeat go to the losers. While I do not condone Castro or any of his policies, I do not feel that the Human Race can celebrate the death of any other Human being.

[Lorax429]

» With all due respect to anyone that suffered, I think this is in

» particularly poor taste. In any war, the spoils of victory go to the

» winners and the agoney of defeat go to the losers. While I do not condone

» Castro or any of his policies, I do not feel that the Human Race can

» celebrate the death of any other Human being.

I have to say the first part of your statement doesn't make any sense to me. It comes across like you are saying that Castro had some kind of right to do what he did because he won. I can't believe that is what you meant, in fact I'm sure it isn't, but it kind of reads that way to me. At the very least it comes across awfully insensitive to the Cuban families that had their lives torn apart by this dictator.

The second part of your statement I can understand. Celebrating someones death does seem a little wrong, but there a a few people in history where I can forgive it. For me, two obvious cases from recent history are Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro. When it comes to them, I say go ahead and celebrate.

[Miami101]

We have this party every week!

[puros71]

I don't think any american gov't entity whether federal state, county or city, should sponsor any type of festivities due to the death of anyone.....not sadamm hussein, not hitler no one...that **** ain't right to celebrate the death of someone...and anyone that tries to say...I don't know why these Miami Cubans trip so much, and feel so sorry for what happend...I don't see groups of Cambodians starting parties when that Kmher Rouge Pol Pot dude died...So maybe Castro imprisoned some people that didn't get a fair trial by our standards, its not like the guy killed millions of people in genocide, how bad is he really..Miami Cubans act like Cuba would be so great today if he hadn;t come to power...I don't know about that....

[Tampa1257]

My statement was fairly clear. While I am not disrespecting anyone that suffered at the hands of Castro, the fact still remains the same that in any war, the winning body makes the rules, not the losers. In this instance, Castro won the popular Revolution with the help of the majority of the citizens of the people of Cuba. As to being in your terms, "insensitive" to the Cuban Families that were affected by the Castro Government, I say not true. I addressed that with my very first statement. Please tell me the difference between what they have suffered and that of other people that have been on the losing side of any war? What about the Africans that were torn away from their families? What about the atrocities that the American Indians endured? What about those that lost to the Roman Legions? What about the Germans after WWII, what about..... You name it, the winners have the ability to decide what government is and how it shall be ruled.

Am I saying that it is right? No, I am not saying that, simply stating a generally accepted fact. The Americans that once lived in Cuba are no longer "Cuban", they are American. Their heritage may be "Cuban", but they are in fact Americans, not "Cuban". Did they suffer? Yes, some did, and some still do, but until the sovereign government of that country makes their moves to govern that country the way that the citizens of Cuba want, no other country has the "right" to dedicate policy to them.

The American Embargo in my opinion is wrong, and has never worked from the beginning, but that fact remains that the Embargo has kept Castro in power and only had the effect of making the general people of Cuba to endure harsher lifestyles.

It is still wrong in my opinion to celebrate the death of any human the way that the South Floridian people plan to upon Castro's death.

[Jimmy2]

I know one thing the Embargo is hurting the people of Cuba more by keeping it in place.

The people in Florida should speak out against it because by not they are hurting the so called people they love.

The Cubans in Florida have a sour taste in their mouth from what happened over forty years ago and i can agree with them.

But lets face it the embargo has not hurt the one's it has been put into place .

And the reason alot of them are coming over to America is to have a better life and thats because of the Embargo hurting the people of Cuba not the Gov.

Batista had lost the support of most of the Cuban people because he was not such a nice guy what about the people he killed and jailed?

Which paved the way for Castro's Revolution and the one's who did not follow Castro had to leave which you have the people in Florida.

The Cuban Gov has always been shaky since the turn of the century.

[puros71]

Ditto, well said Tampa

[DrAlejandro]

I dont get it guys, why here, a website dedicated to the enjoyment of something as uniquely cuban as cigars, does any mention of castro, the embargo or anything negative in the least of the cuban government illicit such a negative response to the cubans living in miami? My family like thousands of others fled cuba for a life of freedom and have worked hard to make it. Unlike many other groups that have come to the US cubans have been able to reach a mostly middle class economic level and have very low levels of recieving welfare. Isnt that the american dream? Why have the cubans gotten a bad name when they are just understandable angered by the way their country was hijacked and by the fact that the majority still have family and close friends that have been left behind and are still suffering? I think that anyone here put in that position would be justifiably angered and would use any reasonable and legal means in their power to try to do what they could to make the situation better. Now if any of you disagree with the means taken thats fine, and I can understand how celebrating someones death may be in bad taste, but try to understand the situation and look at it from their point of view before belittling their plight and basically asking them to shut up, deal with it.

[El Presidente]

Intolerable wrongs have been commited mostly in the name of a flawed ideology. I have no idea how the imprisoned, the disposessed and the exiled could ever forget. I know I could not.

The catastrophe here is that not only those mentioned have been affected. Opportunity and freedom have been robbed from nearly three generations of Cubanos. Today they stare in the face of no money, no prospects, abysmal housing and infrastructure plus the possibility of an opening economy for which they have no assets in which to participate.

There are few winners in Castro's Cuba. While I am dishing out brickbats...the US embargo has had as much a debilitatiing effect on the Cuban people as Castro's policies have. Many in governments past and present should hang their head in shame as should those who support a structure who punish people in the street in order to topple a government. Tiananmen Square occured in 1989, the same people reside in the halls of power in Beijing. Millions dispossed in the modernisation of infrastructure and regeneration of cities, religious groups imprisoned, political prisoners still locked away through convictions without jury. No one says anything more than the softest of words.

Cuba 2007 is a travesty of which many people are to blame. I won't miss Castro but I won't celbrate either until all elements of this hypocrisy are removed.

[DrAlejandro]

» Intolerable wrongs have been commited mostly in the name of a flawed

» ideology. I have no idea how the imprisoned, the disposessed and the

» exiled could ever forget. I know I could not.

»

» The catastrophe here is that not only those mentioned have been affected.

» Opportunity and freedom have been robbed from nearly three generations of

» Cubanos. Today they stare in the face of no money, no prospects, abysmal

» housing and infrastructure plus the possibility of an opening economy for

» which they have no assets in which to participate.

»

» There are few winners in Castro's Cuba. While I am dishing out

» brickbats...the US embargo has had as much a debilitatiing effect on the

» Cuban people as Castro's policies have. Many in governments past and

» present should hang their head in shame as should those who support a

» structure who punish people in the street in order to topple a government.

» Tiananmen Square occured in 1989, the same people reside in the halls of

» power in Beijing. Millions dispossed in the modernisation of

» infrastructure and regeneration of cities, religious groups imprisoned,

» political prisoners still locked away through convictions without jury. No

» one says anything more than the softest of words.

»

» Cuba 2007 is a travesty of which many people are to blame. I won't miss

» Castro but I won't celbrate either until all elements of this hypocrisy

» are removed.

I appreciate your sentiments prez... We can all agree to disagree here and Im all open to political discussion but lets just all try to keep it civil and take into account that there are real people we are talking about here

[El Presidente]

Dr A

I am on the record many times on this forum detailing my feelings toward the Cuban Government. I have been told more than once to sheath my comments as it could make life difficult upon future visits. They can go screw themselves.

Recently, I had a friend visit from Havana connected with the industry. Upon his departure from OZ, the Cuban consul here asked for a full record of who he visited and when.

In the end I had to comply and went into great detail how he visited my house day one...met my wife...my three children (named all of them)...patted my two dogs (listed names of dogs + breed and age), was taken by my youngest son to see his hermit crabs (listed each by name) before visiting the chicken coup (listed the names of the 12 chickens and the breed).

It is hard not to hate the bastards.

[El Presidente]

» Im all open to political discussion but lets just all try to keep it civil

» and take into account that there are real people we are talking about here

I agree. Political discussion inflames passions. No problem with that. It is however important to try and wear the other persons shoes.

It is too easy to say "Cubans are bad", Americans are bad" This policy is right...or wrong. This whole issue is not black and white...it is washed in grey.

[smokum]

I think the Cuban American community has a right to be thankful for the coming changes that they have waited and suffered so long for but I agree that a huge "party" is kind of weird. If thats the outlet they choose I guess there is not much anyone can say. Looking at the pics of the Partagas factory that Pres posted...I saw beautiful people working their asses off probably for very little compensation. But you could also see the absolute pride they have in their occupation and country. It would be nice rather than throw a big party, figure out how to spend the money to help these folks to help themselves as fast as possible. That would be money well spent.

[tigger]

» I don't think any american gov't entity whether federal state, county or

» city, should sponsor any type of festivities due to the death of

» anyone.....not sadamm hussein, not hitler no one...that **** ain't right

» to celebrate the death of someone...

Well put...

[anacostiakat]

Interesting. Those that want to celebrate will.

I don't think any gobment entity should be involved in festivities or a party personally.

[puros71]

**** the same people throwing this party are the same people who finance and harbor terrorists. hmmm

Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists

By JOSÉ PERTIERRA

José Pertierra is an attorney, practicing in Washington, D.C. He represents the Venezuelan government in the case of Luis Posada Carriles.

Last week [early April, 2006] in Miami, Luis Posada Carriles´s accomplice in the downing of the Cuban passenger plane that was blown out of the sky with 73 innocent people on board on October 6, 1976 was interviewed by Juan Manuel Cao of Channel 41 in Miami. His name is Orlando Bosch.

I quote verbatim excerpts from the television interview

Juan Manuel Cao: Did you down that plane in 1976?

Orlando Bosch: If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself . . . . and if I tell you that did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.

Juan Manuel Cao: In that action 76 persons were killed (the correct figure is 73, including a pregnant passenger)?

Orlando Bosch: No chico, in a war such as us cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant, you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.

Juan Manuel Cao: But don´t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?

Orlando Bosch: . . . Who was on board that plane? Four members of the Communist Party, five north Koreans, five Guyanese, (JP: there were really 11 Guyanese passengers) . . . concho chico, four member of the Communist Party chico!!! Who was there? Our enemies . . .

Juan Manuel Cao: ¿And the fencers? The young people on board?

Orlando Bosch: I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant etc etc. She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant. We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that every one who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.

Juan Manuel Cao: If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn’t you think it difficult . . . ?

Orlando Bosch: No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba.

Bosch´s answers to those five questions give us a glimpse into the mind of the kind of terrorist that the United States government harbors and protects in Miami: terrorists that for the last forty-seven years have waged a bloody and ruthless war against the Cuban people.

What happened to Cubana de Aviación 455 almost thirty years ago is no secret. We need simply examine the CIA’s own declassified cables. At the time, this was the worst act of aviation terrorism in history, and the first time that a civilian airliner was blown up by terrorists.

More than three months before CU-455 was blown out of the sky over Barbados on that sunny Wednesday afternoon of October 6, 1976, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informed Washington that a Cuban exile extremist group planned to place a bomb on a Cubana de Aviación flight.

The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research reported to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that a CIA source had overheard Luis Posada Carriles say less than a month prior to the bombing that “we are going hit a Cuban airliner.”

Neither Washington nor the CIA alerted Cuban authorities to the terrorist threat against their planes.

The bombing was carried out by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Final preparations for the terrorist act began with the arrival of Orlando Bosch in Caracas on September 8, 1976. Bosch is a Cuban-born terrorist who was the acknowledged leader of an organization called Coordinación de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas (CORU).

According to the FBI, CORU was an umbrella group of Cuban exile organizations that was formed to “plan, finance and carry out terrorist operations and attacks against Cuba.” (FBI cable dated June 29, 1976).

When Bosch arrived in Caracas on the 8th of September of that year, Posada Carriles was there to greet and make available to him his right hand man: trusted confidante Hernán Ricardo, who has admitted under oath to be a CIA operative. In 1976, Ricardo was also an employee of Luis Posada Carriles at a private intelligence firm that the latter founded and ran in Caracas: Investigaciones Comerciales e Industriales (ICI). Ricardo says that Posada Carriles introduced him to Orlando Bosch at the ICI offices in Caracas.

To help him with the special operation that Bosch and Posada planned for him, Ricardo in turn recruited Freddy Lugo. A Venezuelan citizen, Lugo has also admitted under oath to be a CIA operative.

We know that the foursome of Posada, Bosch, Ricardo and Lugo met together at least four times to plan the downing of the plan.

At the meetings, the terrorists agreed upon the coded words they would use to describe the success of the operation. The plane would be known as the “bus”, and the passengers would be called the “dogs.” “The rest is up to you,” Posada told Lugo and Ricardo.

The C-4 explosives were carried on board the aircraft by Ricardo and Lugo in a tube of toothpaste and in a camera.

Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo boarded the CU-455 flight in Trinidad at 12:15 PM bound for Barbados. Ricardo traveled under a forged passport using a false name. They sat in the middle of the plane. During the flight, they placed the C-4 explosives in two separate places in the plane: the rear bathroom and underneath the seat belonging to Freddy Lugo. Lugo and Ricardo got off the plane during its brief stopover at Seawell Airport in Barbados. They later admitted under oath that they had each received special training in explosives from the CIA.

Aboard CU-455 were 73 persons. 57 of the passengers were Cubans. 11 of them were Guyanese medical students in Cuba. The remaining five passengers were Koreans. Those on board averaged only 30 years of age.

Traveling with the group were 24 members of the Cuban fencing team, many of them teen-agers, fresh from gold medal victories at the Youth Fencing Championship in Caracas. They proudly wore their gold medals on board the aircraft. One of the young fencers, Nancy Uranga, was only twenty-three years old and pregnant. She wasn’t supposed to be on board. That spot on the fencing team belonged to a pretty little twelve-year old fencer, unusually tall for her age, named María González. María had planned to participate in the Caribbean Games, and was on the tarmac at Havana’s José Martí Airport ready to board the plane that would take the team to the Games, when one of her coaches gave her the bad news that international amateur rules prevented twelve year olds from competing. María reportedly was devastated, and she went to her home in Havana’s neighborhood called La Víbora, and cried for three days, refusing to watch the games on Cuban television because it hurt her so much not to be there. Nancy Uranga was summoned to the Airport and took María´s place on the ill fated trip to the Caribbean Games.

The fencing team was a roaring success at the Games. They won gold, silver and bronze medals. They were to return home on October 6, 1976. The athletes proudly wore their medals dangling over their clothes, as they boarded the aircraft. Cubana de Aviación 455 stopped first in Trinidad at 11:03 AM, and then touched down again in Barbados at 12:25 PM.

Nine minutes after take-off from Barbados, the bombs exploded and the plane caught fire. The passengers on board then lived the most horrifying ten minutes of their lives, as the plane turned into a scorching coffin.

The beep voice-recorder captured the last terrifying moments of the flight at 1:24 PM: “Seawell! Seawell! CU-455 Seawell. . . ! We have an explosion on board. . . . . We have a fire on board.”

The pilot, Wilfredo Pérez (affectionately known as “Felo”), asked Seawell Airport for permission to return and land, but the plane and its passengers were already doomed.

As the plane approached the shore, it was rapidly losing altitude and control. “Hit the water, Felo, Hit the Water,” said the co-pilot.

Rather than crashing into the white sands of the beach called Paradise and killing the beachgoers, Felo courageously banked the plane toward the water where it crashed in a ball of fire one mile north of Deep Water Bay.

Pieces of bodies were slowly recovered from the sea. Most of them too grotesquely disfigured to be identified by their family members. There were no survivors.

After deplaning, Lugo and Ricardo hurriedly left Seawell Airport in Barbados and checked into a local hotel under assumed names.

From the hotel, Hernán Ricardo called his bosses in Venezuela: Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Unable to find Posada at his desk, he left a message with Posada´s secretary. He then called Caracas again and asked a mutual friend, Marinés Vega, to deliver the following message to Posada:

“We are in a desperate situation, the bus was fully loaded with dogs . . . they should send someone I can recognize . . . I will be waiting in a soda fountain near the embassy just in case something happens and I need to ask for asylum there.”

Ricardo was able to communicate with Bosch who allegedly said to him: “my friend we have a problem here in Caracas. An aircraft is never blown up in midair . . .”, implying that the plan had been for the bomb to explode while the plane was on the ground before take-off.

Sensing how hot things were getting for them in Barbados, Lugo and Ricardo boarded a return flight to Trinidad on British West Indies Airlines that very evening. On the flight, Ricardo said to his buddy: “Damn it, Lugo, I’m desperate and feel like crying. I had never killed anyone before.”

In Port of Spain, the terrorists checked into the Holiday Inn with false identities and made more desperate calls to Caracas, trying to reach Posada Carriles.

Their nervous demeanor at the airport and at the hotel, as well as their conversations in the taxis they took in Barbados and later in Trinidad, led the police to zero in on them as the primary suspects in the bombing. They were arrested and interrogated by detectives from the Trinidad police department.

Both confessed to Commissioner Dannis Ramdwar who took their written depositions. Lugo and Ricardo each admitted to being CIA operatives. Ricardo described in detail how he could detonate C-4 explosives and pointed to a pencil on Ramdwar´s desk that was similar to the timer he used to detonate the explosive on board the plane. Ricardo also told the police in Trinidad that he worked for Luis Posada Carriles. He told Ramdwar that the head of CORU was Orlando Bosch and drew for the police an organizational chart of CORU and said that the terrorist organization was also known as Condor.

Upon hearing of the confessions of Lugo and Ricardo, the police in Caracas moved in and arrested Posada and Bosch. They also obtained a warrant and searched the offices of Posada Carriles where they confiscated weapons and sophisticated electronic monitoring equipment. The police also found a schedule of Cubana flights in Posada´s Caracas office.

In one of the very first reports on the October 6, 1976, downing of Cubana Flight 455, the FBI Venezuelan bureau cables that a confidential source has identified Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch as responsible for the bombing. “The source all but admitted that Posada and Bosch had engineered the bombing of the airline,” according to the report.

During the television interview three days ago in Miami, Bosch talked about an agreement reached between terrorists in Santo Domingo in June of 1976.

The FBI itself tells us about that secret agreement. According to an FBI report, Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and other terrorists formed an umbrella terrorist organization called CORU at a meeting in the Dominican Republic. The FBI report details how at that meeting in the Dominican Republic, CORU planned a series of bombing attacks against Cuban entities, as well as the murder of Communists in the Western Hemisphere. On page 6, the report relates in great detail how Orlando Bosch was met in Caracas on September 8, 1976, by Luis Posada and other anti-Castro exiles and a deal was struck as to what kind of activities he could organize on Venezuelan soil.

After the arrests of Lugo, Ricardo, Bosch and Posada, Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana and Cuba ceded jurisdiction over the downing of the passenger plane to Venezuela, and all four were prosecuted in Caracas for murder.

Prosecuting terrorists has a price. The Judge who issued the initial arrest warrants for the four terrorists, Delia Estava Moreno, received several death threats and attempts at blackmail as reprisals for her conduct. As a result, she was forced to recuse herself. The presiding judge of the military court, Retired General Elio Garcia Barrios, also received death threats and in 1983, his son and chauffeur were murdered during a Mafia-style hit intended to even the score and intimidate those who dared legally prosecute the murderers.

Eventually, Lugo and Ricardo were convicted, but before the Court could reach a verdict regarding his case, Luis Posada Carriles escaped from the prison at San Juan de los Moros in the State of Guárico where he had been confined after two unsuccessful escape attempts.

Posada escaped with the help of at least $50,000 from a right wing extremist group in Miami.

Fifteen days after his escape from jail, Posada was smuggled out of Venezuela bound for Aruba on a shrimp boat. He spent a week in Aruba and was then flown by private plane to Costa Rica and then San Salvador. He immediately started working alongside Felix Rodriguez, a high ranking CIA member, at the Ilopango Airbase. Posada´s job in San Salvador was to supply the Nicaraguan Contras with arms and supplies obtained through the sale of narcotics. This Operation became a scandal known as Iran-Contra. Felix Rodriguez was the CIA’s point man in Central America for the Iran-Contra scandal, hired for the job by an old friend from the CIA Donald Gregg who was Vice-President Bush’s National Security Advisor. According to Anna Louise Bardach who interviewed Posada while she was a reporter for the New York Times, “Posada noted with a certain pride that George Bush had headed the CIA from November 1975 to January 1977”-a period that covered some of the most violent crimes committed by Cuban exiles and Operation Condor: including the Letelier assassination and the downing of the passenger plane.

Posada spent the next several years in Central America working for the security services of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But in the early 90s he turned his attention once again to Cuba which was struggle to jump start a tourist industry in order to offset a dramatic economic downturn after the demise of the Soviet Bloc. From his lair in Central America he recruited Salvadoran and Guatemalan mercenaries to smuggle explosives to Cuba, and in 1997 bombs began to blow in the finest hotels and restaurants of Havana-killing an Italian tourist named Fabio DiCelmo and wounding several others.

Cuba learned that the campaign of terror against its tourist industry was being financed by Miami exile organizations and orchestrated by Luis Posada Carriles in Central America. Faced with the FBI´s refusal to reign in the terrorists in Miami, Cuba sent some very brave men to penetrate these terrorist organizations and gather information with the purpose of asking President Clinton to intervene and order the Feds to arrest the terrorists.

After gathering enough evidence to determine the source of the terror campaign, on May 1, 1998 Fidel Castro sent a personal emissary to Washington with a handwritten message to President Clinton: the emissary was none other than Nobel Prize for Literature Gabriel García Márquez. President Clinton was out of town for several days in California, and after waiting him out at the Hotel Washington for several days, García Márquez finally met with White House Chief of Staff Mac McLarty and gave him the letter. García Márquez recounts McLarty´s reaction to the letter and quotes McLarty as saying to him: “We have enemies in common: terrorists”.

In the wake of the Garcia Marquez visit, the U.S. sent an FBI team to Cuba a month later to discuss collaboration with Cuba on a “War On Terror”. Cuba handed over to the FBI tapes of 14 telephone conversations of Luis Posada Carriles with details on the series of bombs that had exploded in Cuba in the 90s. Cuba also gave the FBI Luis Posada Carriles´ addresses in El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama. Also tapes of conversations with Central American detainees in Cuba who admitted Posada is their boss. All together, Cuba turned over 60 sets of documents with information about 40 terrorists based in Miami, including their addresses, and evidence of their ties to terror.

[Miami101]

Wow

After reading the above.....I have to step back and think about it.

I guess none of the above have had family killed, or lock away for years by the Cuban Gov. I had to watch my Grandfather take odd jobs to support us, and have seen many Doctors take odd jobs to live. It is even harder to hear from your family that they are sick and they don’t have medicine, or even family die from lack off.

Most of my family lost everything when they came here to Miami...or like we like to call it the Numi...(New Cuba).

Cuban today: it is a hard thing when you speak to the older people who have gone back to visit, and with tears they fall apart because the city, and the state of the country is so bad. The fear that they may never see a free Cuba…..or the fact that the young Cuban are becoming very American, and forgetting the roots which they came from. I think even if Cuba becomes free it will be Rape over and over again.

Yea I think I will have a big party when Castro past

The Gov. in Miami…Miami is not like the mid west it is almost like being in a Latin country. I know people here who only speak Spanish. Miami is a different world! I don’t know how to define this, but things are very different here. We have a big mix of people, and it is rare to meet someone born in Miami.

[Miami101]

So maybe Castro imprisoned some people that didn't get a fair trial by our standards, its not like the guy killed millions of people in genocide, how bad is he really..Miami Cubans act like Cuba would be so great today if he hadn;t come to power...I don't know about that....

Wow this statement is so bad I can not even begin to put it to words. Hell I have to leave it alone:

Here is some home work:

October 2000 – XF-1

THE DELIBERATE SINKING OF THE TUGBOAT “13 DE MARZO” BY THE CUBAN AUTHORITIES

On July 13, 1994 from the town of Regla near Havana, the tugboat “13 de Marzo” started its trip to freedom. Seventy-two Cubans, men, women and children had decided to leave their home country to see if they could find freedom in the United States. But the Cuban authorities had another plan, somehow they were aware of what was about to happen and one “Polargo” type government boat was waiting for them and as soon as they got out of the bay, the authorities started to spray cannons of water on the tugboat. Women raised their children on their arms pleading for them to stop the water attack, to no avail. Two more “Polargo” boats surrounded them and started to circle around, ramming the “13 de Marzo” until they cracked the scull of the old boat and it began to sink.

For forty minutes the three boats continued circling the sinking boat. About 30 people were trapped inside and never got out. Some jumped into the ocean but instead of helping them, the “Polargo” crews continued to spray water on them and intensified the velocity to create a whirlwind situation to make surviving more difficult. Evidently they did not want to leave any survivors of this tragedy. As in previous similar cases there should be no witness.

All of a sudden they stopped the attack on the survivors and a Cuban Coast Guard boat, who had been a silent witness of what was happening, pull them out of the water and took them back to Havana.. It happened that a Greek ship coming into port was also witnessing the whole incredible operation and the three “Polargo” crews could not finish the massacre.

Out of 72 that intended to escape in the “13 de Marzo,” 41 were assassinated, 23 of them children.

Some of the 31 survivors later escaped from Cuba and have been recounting this horrible genocide experience to the U.S. Congress (on February 1995 by Sergio Perudin,) to the United Nations Assembly and Human Rights Organization throughout the world.

Janet Hernández, one of the survivors, reminiscing on the experience says: “Sometimes I think everything was a nightmare. But the horrific screams of the mothers who lost their children and the little hands sinking forever to the bottom of the sea and the crying sorrow we all shared…is real.”

A crude example of what Castrocomunism is all about.

[Miami101]

I don't want to start any problem. I just want to make sure when people make statements they have the facts.

December 2000 – XF - 3

THE CRUEL DEATH OF WILLIAM MORGAN

One thing that has transpired from the beginning of his tenure at the front of the Cuban dictatorship in 1959, is the all consuming hate Fidel Castro has for the American people. The evil spirit of his personality, probably exacerbated by the writings of Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” which was his favorite reading while an student, plus the influence of Marx and the cruel exercise of power by Lenin and Stalin, were shaping his unreasonable scorn and contempt for this country. A vivid example of this hate was shown in the case of Major William Morgan, when he was condemned to death by a firing squad.

William Alexander Morgan was an American, a blond, blue-eyed young man from Ohio, very tough, full of physical strength, who had been in the American army and have had some trouble while participating in the occupation forces in Japan. He happened to be in Havana, when forces that were against Batista attacked the National Palace on March 13, 1957. Later he joined the “II Front of Escambray” guerrillas fighting in the Escambray Mountains, in the central part of Cuba, taking part in battles and ended up with the grade of Major of the Rebel Army and took the city of Cienfuegos days before Batista ran away.

Morgan had a particular dislike for the manner in which communism was being introduced by Castro in all the spheres of the new revolutionary government. At the beginning he was involved in a conspiracy that some say he told Castro about it. He always denied that it was his plan, just that he thought that it was too soon to start a new revolution.

But he went back to the Escambray Mountains and started to develop a frog farm, traveling constantly from Havana and back to the mountains. He obtained from the American Embassy some 6 page booklets, containing anti-Communist comic style stories, to release them in the towns in the Escambray. But he started to have trouble with Che Guevara and Félix Torres, the leading communist in that area. One of his close associates was the also Major Jesús Carreras Zayas who had had a personal encounter with Che Guevara while fighting in the mountains.

Both, Morgan and Carrera, had become obstacles to the forces preparing a take over of the government by communism, and were accused of carrying arms to the Escambray to start an uprising and were therefore condemned to death by a firing squad. But since William Morgan was an American, his death was not going to be easy, he had to be humiliated. Let us read what Paul D. Bethel, says in his book The Losers (1969, page 192):

“The final months of Morgan’s life in La Cabaña are vividly portrayed by fellow inmate John Martino in his book, I Was Castro’s Prisoner. The Martino-Morgan conversations throw considerable light on the personality and ambitions of William Morgan. In any event, William Morgan marched to his summary trial, singing: “As the Caissons go Rolling Along.” At 2:30 a.m. one day in February 1961, Fidel and Raul Castro attended his execution by firing squad. As his hands were being tied behind his back, an unidentified voice in the shadows of the lights beamed on Morgan shouted: “Kneel and beg for your life!” Morgan shouted back: “I kneel for no man!” But they used a sharp-shooter, not a firing squad, to kill him. First, a bullet was put through one knee, then one through the other. As Morgan crashed to the ground cursing the Communists, the same unidentified voice from the shadows exulted: “There! You see, we made you kneel!” The rifleman put another bullet through one of Morgan’s shoulders. He took his time putting a bullet through the other, prolonging the agony of his victim. Then a captain walked up to Morgan and emptied a clip from his Tommy gun into his chest. That is how William Morgan died.”

Considering that in the presence of Fidel Castro no one else talks, there can be no doubt as to whom the voice in the shadow was.

This is a nice portrait of Castro's hate for his country. To those trying to sell him as a revolutionary victim of "Imperialism" let us remind them of the naked nature of this felon.

(Sources for this article came from the books "The Losers" by Paul D. Bethel; "Cuba en Guerra" by Enrique Encinosa; "Freedom, A Journal of the Free Cuban" and personal interviews of witnesses of that era.) MLT

[Miami101]

» I think the Cuban American community has a right to be thankful for the

» coming changes that they have waited and suffered so long for but I agree

» that a huge "party" is kind of weird. If thats the outlet they choose I

» guess there is not much anyone can say. Looking at the pics of the

» Partagas factory that Pres posted...I saw beautiful people working their

» asses off probably for very little compensation. But you could also see

» the absolute pride they have in their occupation and country. It would be

» nice rather than throw a big party, figure out how to spend the money to

» help these folks to help themselves as fast as possible. That would be

» money well spent.

This is a good statement: I think most of Miami we will return to buy houses, and help people. I have a Apt building in Cuba now which I csend money to fix.

[puros71]

We can go back and forth. Both sides have there hands bloody. My take on all this is that the party idea is kind of strange. And people on the outside are looking and saying damn, "These people are strange." As far as Miami being Latino out and being like another country, well most Latinos in America dont side with American Cubanos. Boriquas, Chicanos, Centro Americanos, Sur Americanos dont have the same ideology as Cuban Americans. And the welfare thing, yeah most Cubans who come here know damn well they are getting everything handed to them on a platter. Under the Cuban Adjustment Act. Free monthly check, free rent, free school, and free food stamp. How do I know becuase I know gente in Miami chico.

Now Latinos from other countries know what poverty is. Unemployment, corupt governments, and drug cartels. Risking in there lives crossing the desert for a better life. And even there children going to war and fighting for this country, USA. See the difference. Wonder why many Latino countries are moving to a socialism? Because many are tired of being and living in real poverty. Tired of not having food on the table.

I am no communist I just feel that Miami needs to be exposed. I dont like when I go to Cuba and I see people scared of speaking there mind. Cuba needs change indeed and the embargo is making the Cuban society suffer. Marxism in todays world just doesnt work. Unless your China.

[el pato ahumado]

I think the event is entirely appropriate, though I also think the label "party" or "celebration" does it a disservice, especially since it's a municipal function. While Miami's Cuban exile community will understandably and rightly deem Castro's death a celebratory event, better to call it 'an observation of the dictator's passing', or words to that effect.

There's no question that Miami's Little Havana streets will be overflowing with revelers in various stages of sobriety. I'd guess Miami is hoping to drain off a significant enough portion of that into the Orange Bowl to alleviate some of the pressure on the police to maintain order in the rest of the city, as well as make its own statement of congratulations and empathy for the exile community.

On a further note, there's really no such thing as the "Cuban community", if you mean it as monolithic and of the same mind in its aspirations and views in how to achieve them. In Miami, the "Cuban community" is still headed by that now-aging first generation of exiles, more militant in their views and fervently supportive of the embargo. And clearly, the current administration owes a huge political debt to them.

[Van55]

» There's no question that Miami's Little Havana streets will be overflowing

» with revelers in various stages of sobriety. I'd guess Miami is hoping to

» drain off a significant enough portion of that into the Orange Bowl to

» alleviate some of the pressure on the police to maintain order in the rest

» of the city, as well as make its own statement of congratulations and

» empathy for the exile community.

I have very little doubt that this event IS the City of Miami's effort to isolate and control the inevitable chaos in the streets of Miami once word of Castro's passing hits. Is it appropriate for the City to label the event a celebration of Castro's death? I don't think so.

.