This note is in response to the recent appearance of Lieutenant Colonel Chris Simons in the Miami TV program, A Mano Limpia with Oscar Haza, (Channel 41) which took place on Wednesday, October 8^th and followed up articles published in El Nuevo Herald on October 9 and 10.

During Mr. Simmons presentation on the above mentioned local TV program he stated that I had been a Cuban agent, now retired after the FBI convinced me to change my “ways”.  He also stated that I had had multiple sessions with the FBI on this issue and had subsequently cooperated with and followed instructions from US government officials on Cuba related issues.

For the record ALL of these statements by Mr Simmons are completely false.

I have never worked for the government of Cuba or followed instructions by said government.  On the issue of the FBI meetings, several years ago I had to contact the FBI point person in Miami in charge of overseeing Cuban American groups. The reason for my phone call had to do with my own protection having received threats of impending bodily harm over the phone for my work of trying to change US policy towards Cuba.  I have not had a meeting with anyone from the FBI since then.  Neither have I followed instructions from US government agents on my Cuba work. 

I found it quite interesting when Mr. Haza asked Mr. Simmons if he knew that I was married to a high ranking officer in the US military.  The high ranking officer he was alluding to who happens to have my husband’s same name is the former Head of the Southern Command, General Charles Wilhelm. My husband, Dr. Charles Wilhelm, a physician, is a decorated Vietnam flight surgeon who has not been in the military since the Vietnam War ended.   Is it possible that Mr. Haza could be so misinformed?

For the past 15 years I have worked in programs that promote people to people contacts between the people of the United States and those of Cuba; humanitarian projects that assist the people of Cuba and as a community activist both in Miami and Washington advocating against the travel restrictions that separate Cuban families and travel restrictions that limit the rights of ALL Americans to travel.

You must ask why I do the work I do when it obviously causes such personal and professional heartache, when it is a constant battle against personal defamation, when it is a daily struggle to defend one of the greatest gifts of our US constitution, our freedom of speech in a city we call home, Miami?  When I returned to Cuba in 1994 after a 33 year absence it became obvious to me that the deep and painful schism in the Cuban family caused by both governments’ counterproductive policies had resulted in a family feud of enormous proportions. Because I saw then as I continue to see today the horrendous results of this pain in the Cuban family. Because I believe deeply that this family feud can only come to an end thru engagement, whether thru unrestricted travel, joint educational exchanges, serious people to people work and respectful dialogue. This family feud has kept both countries’ policies hostage and this must change.  My work will not cease until US policy changes and Cubans find a way thru the painful but necessary process of national reconciliation.

The politics of personal assassination to silence voices of dissent in the South Florida community are a well known and well established reality. Is this another example of attempts to silence moderate voices in our community by using the new label “agent” (which in our community immediately translates to spies) instead of the past labels of Dialogueros and Communists.  These tactics must cease in our community especially when one of the vehicles used to conduct such character assassination is through the use of a federally regulated entity. Perhaps the time has come to take legal action to accomplish this goal.

By David Rieff

From the Sunday, July 13, New York Times magazine   

On the surface, political life in Cuban Miami seems unchanged. Little Havana is still partly a Disney version of a displaced Cuba and partly a genuine community hub, where families who have long since left for suburbia still come for nostalgic weekend lunches. At the Versailles Restaurant, the community newspapers preaching no compromise with Castro are all that are on offer. For almost four decades, the Versailles has been an obligatory stop for Washington politicians courting the Cuban-American community, visits that, as photographs in the restaurant attest, have often involved putting on a white guayabera, the four-pocket dress shirt that often replaces a coat and tie in the Caribbean. This familiar theater of intransigence — a staple of South Florida life at least since the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, when C.I.A.-backed Cuban exiles tried to overthrow the new Communist regime — is ubiquitous. Some Cuban-Americans point hopefully to a softening in the Spanish-language, Cuba-focused radio outlets that now dominate the South Florida market. But for an outsider, what is striking is the degree to which the hard-line stance endures, since it might have been supposed that 50 years of failure to influence events on the island might have led to the conclusion that the hard-line position needed to be reconsidered. Most officeholders in Florida and, for that matter, most national politicians continue to at least pay lip service to the dream of a post-Communist Cuba, even though, early this year, Fidel Castro succeeded in seamlessly handing over power to his brother Raúl — testimony, if any was needed, to the stability of the regime.

Yet if Cuban Miami does indeed continue to dream, it is also beginning, quietly, tentatively and painfully, to adjust. Backstage, something very new is happening. Call it the Miami Spring, or Cuban-American glasnost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/magazine/13CUBANS-t.html?ref=magazine

BY MARY ELLEN KLAS

Click to read the original article from The Miami Herald.

TALLAHASSEE —

About 120 Cuban families and their travel agents urged Gov. Charlie Crist on Wednesday to veto a bill that would impose tough new regulations and penalties on companies that arrange travel to Cuba. The bill, sponsored by Miami Rep. David Rivera and Eustis Sen. Carey Baker, would require companies licensed by the U.S. State Department to provide travel services to Cuba and ”any other terrorist nation” to pay a $2,500 annual registration fee — up from $300 — and post a bond of up to $300,000.

Travel companies complain that the measure will increase their costs, force them to defend against unfounded allegations by people with political motives, and make it nearly impossible for many financially strapped families with relatives in Cuba to afford the trips home.

”There is nothing in this bill that protects you as a consumer. It is basically a witchhunt from people who have their own political agenda,” said Tessie Aral of ABC Charters Travel in Miami, who organized the protest in the state capital. Her company flies 20,000 visitors to Cuba a year on flights that operate five days a week.

Sylvia Wilhelm, executive director of the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights, believes the bill is another election-year attempt to look tough on Cuba, similar to the tightened travel restrictions imposed by President Bush in 2004. But she said the measure could backfire this year because she believes most people in the Cuban American community want to see the tight travel restrictions lifted.

”No government has the right to separate families,” she said. “The only thing [the Bush restrictions] have done is create havoc in the Cuban family. Our group is going to be actively campaigning against any candidate who supports regulations that separate families.”

Members of the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights (CACFR) traveled to Tallahassee, FL, today (Wed. June 11) to meet with Townson Fraser, Governor Charlie Crist’s deputy chief of staff and legislative affairs director. During the almost hour-long meeting, the issue discussed was Senate Bill 1310, the law introduced in the Florida legislature by State Rep. David Rivera, from Miami, which passed both the Florida House and Senate, and should go into effect on July 1.

We were there to insist that Governor Crist veto the law for reasons outlined during the meeting.

“Not only is the law unfair and discriminatory,” Fraser was told. But if allowed to take effect it will only create greater chaos and pain in a community already rattled by federal regulations that limit family visits to once every three years; limits remittances; and defines who family members one can visit and send remittances to.

Rep. Rivera claims 1310 will help Florida regulate travel to Cuba, calling it a terrorist state. What the Miami republican fails, or refuses, to realize is that Cuba travel is already heavily regulated by the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury through OFAC.

At a time when Florida is facing cutbacks to education, health care for children, social services and a host of much needed state services due to a receding economy, Rivera and his ilk want to create and even costlier bureaucracy which will only mirror at times federal law and regulations. At the same time, 1310 will probably put a number of Cuba travel providers out of business creating greater unemployment and loss of revenue to the state.

In a hot 90 degree day in Tallahassee, more than 100 Cuban Americans from Miami also traveled all night in buses where we all participated in a rally after the meeting with the governor’s office. From children to elderly citizens participated peacefully, asking the governor to veto 1310.

Stay tuned for further developments…

Alvaro F. Fernandez

Florida Senate Bill 1310, which will further limit the ability of Cuban families on both sides of the Florida Straits to stay in touch with each other, is both cruel and discriminatory, say members of the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights (CACFR) as they prepare to take their case to the governor’s office in Tallahassee on Wednesday morning. Joined by a group of other organizations and Cuban Americans from Miami, Commission directors will meet with key staffers from the governor’s office to discuss how this bill will negatively impact not only families, but businesses, jobs and in the end, Florida residents’ pocketbooks.  A peaceful demonstration is planned for that same morning in Tallahassee in front of the Capitol Building and the governor’s office. A group of Miamians will have traveled all night in buses to attend the rally.  

“Our hope is to stop this cruel and discriminatory law from going into effect on July 1,” said Alvaro F. Fernandez, Commission president. “If 1310 does become law, family travel to Cuba would become even more arduous and expensive. It is why we will appeal to the governor’s humanity and understanding of what is good for our state and our people,” added Fernandez.

“It is a sad state of affairs when for the sake of electoral politics basic family rights are violated”, said Silvia Wilhelm, Commission executive director. “I thought we had seen the end of it after the 2004 regulations.”

CACFR was created in June 2004, solely for one purpose, to combat the cruel regulations imposed by the Bush Administration limiting family travel to Cuba to once every three years, with no exceptions, not even for humanitarian reasons. Included in the new measures was a limit of remittances one could send to those family members. Most insulting, some felt, was the fact that the administration deemed fit to define who a Cuban family member could be — excluding aunts, uncles and cousins, for example. 

A recent Florida International University (FIU) poll revealed that 66 percent of Miami Cuban Americans were in disagreement with these regulations. Two years ago when there was hope that U.S. Rep. William Delahunt would present a bill in Congress eliminating the anti-Cuban family measures, more than 14,000 persons signed a CACFR petition in favor of the Delahunt bill.

The Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times have both written editorials very critical of the Florida legislation (SB 1310) which takes effect July 1. Businesses affected by the new Florida measure on travel to Cuba have categorically stated they will file a lawsuit against the state if the legislation is signed by Governor Crist. According to experts, this is a losing case for the state and will therefore end up costing all Florida taxpayers in court expenses and time wasted.  

The state has yet to address Senate Bill 1310’s regulations and procedures. Companies flying to Cuba at this time are at a loss as to what the next steps will be. Experts agree that one of the immediate results of the law will be chaos. It is also expected that the 45-minute air flight will be prolonged since a third leg to the flight will probably be added making the trip also more expensive.

By DAMIEN CAVE

Taken from The New York Times.

MIAMI — Baltasar Martin Garrote desperately wants to see his mother turn 86 in August at her home in Cuba. But an American law will not let him.

Cuban-Americans can visit the island of Cuba only once every three years, so because he spent 12 days there last October, he must wait, hoping and praying that his mother, who has cancer, lives until 2010.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Mr. Garrote said. “If you have sick relatives, you should have a right to see them. That’s not political.”

Click to read the full article

Three State ACLU Affiliates, Center for Constitutional Rights Join First Challenge to Increased Restrictions on Family Visits Announced in 2004
Versión en español: http://www.aclufl.org/spanish/noticias/vilaseca.cfm
MIAMI and MONTPELIER, Vt. – American Civil Liberties Union Affiliates in Florida, Vermont and Massachusetts, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), today filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief in Vilaseca v. U.S. Department of Treasury, a federal lawsuit in Vermont challenging severe restrictions imposed by the Bush Administration on travel to visit close family members in Cuba.

The lawsuit is the first challenge to the U.S. government’s family visit restrictions, which were announced in 2004 but are being challenged now by four individuals who have current urgent needs to visit with elderly or ill relatives. The regulations prohibit Americans from visiting close family members in Cuba more than once every three years, instead of every year as had been the case for many years, even in emergency humanitarian situations. For the first time, the regulations also prevent Americans from visiting aunts, uncles or cousins at all. Anyone who violates the new rules could face fines of up to $1 million and up to ten years in jail.

“The ability of Cuban-Americans to visit relatives in Cuba, especially at crucial moments in the history of the family such as the celebration of marriages, or visiting a sick relative in a hospital, or attending a relative’s funeral, is essential to maintain family integrity,” said Howard Simon, ACLU of Florida Executive Director. “The Government of the United States should not be in the business of breaking up families by restricting their ability to visit each other. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, clearly states that ‘Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.’

“Cuban-Americans with family members in Cuba should be able to visit their relatives – particularly under demanding situations such as death and illness,” Simon added. “If the Government’s goal is to end the communist regime in Cuba and progress toward a more democratic society, the answer is to encourage open dialogue, not shut it down. Further isolating Cuba prevents more contact with dissident groups that will foster the growth of democratic institutions. The Government is standing in the way of progress for Cubans here in the U.S. and in Cuba.”

The ACLU argues that the due process right to preserve family relationships is deeply rooted in the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Further, the ACLU points to international human rights law that confirms that the preservation of family relationships is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of four individuals, Armando Vilaseca, Yurisleidis Leyva Mora, Jared Kingsbury Carter, and Maricel Lucero Keniston, all of whom reside in Vermont. The parties are asking the court to enter an injunction requiring the Government to cease enforcement of the “Family Visit Regulations” and allow Vilaseca and other Cuban-Americans to resume annual and humanitarian travel to Cuba for family reasons.

The amicus brief was filed today in the United States District Court of Vermont. Although it was filed in Vermont, the result of the lawsuit will have the greatest impact in Florida, where most Cuban-Americans reside.

The ACLU acknowledges and is grateful to the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP for their hard work with the three ACLU affiliates and CCR.

The amicus brief was prepared by James L. Messenger, Malick W. Ghachem, Okey Onyejekwe, Wasif Qureshi and Arthur D’Andrea, all of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, which represented the groups pro bono. Other lawyers on the brief include Mitchell L. Pearl, of Langrock Sperry & Wool, LLP in Burlington, VT; Randall Marshall, ACLU of Florida Legal Director; John Reinstein and Sarah Wunsch, ACLU of Massachusetts; and Darius Charney, Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City.

Taddeo tells Ros-Lehtinen to “stop tearing families apart”
…We must stop tearing Cuban and Cuban-American families apart. Who can think it is right to keep a daughter from seeing her dying father? Who believes that it is a good policy that prevents a young man from sending money home to his grandmother? These restrictions are inhumane and they go against the family values of all Americans.

The time has come to lift the 2004 travel and remittance restrictions. I hereby call on Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen – who was so instrumental in the Bush Administration’s decision to impose the ban – to abandon her previous position and to support Cuban and Cuban-American families.

BY MICHAEL PUTNEY

mputney@local10.com

Get ready for a fresh blast of gale force rhetoric about Cuba, some it refreshing but most as stale as last week’s ropa vieja.

The winds starting blowing yesterday with remarks by John McCain to mark Cuba Independence Day and will continue later this week with a speech to the Cuban American National Foundation by Barack Obama.

There’s more. Click here to read it.

From The Miami Herald of Wednesday, May 21

BY ANA MENENDEZ
An open letter to the presidential hopefuls in town this week:Welcome to South Florida and thanks for coming. We hate to start on a downbeat note, but time is short and we have a lot of problems you should know about.

Traffic, as you saw coming from the airport, is a mess. And now the good people who actually take mass transit face huge fare increases.

The state’s budget is in so much trouble that services are being slashed across Florida. We suffer a recurrent disaster called hurricanes. And another called boom-and-bust. We now have the highest number of empty condos anywhere, says a new report by the National Association of Realtors.

All these empty condos, gas at $4 a gallon and our politicians want to trap us deeper in suburbia. They just voted to keep pushing development closer to the Everglades.

EMPHASIS ON CUBA

Like I said, we have a lot of problems. But chances are you’re not here to talk about them. Chances are you’re here to talk about what everyone who wants to get elected comes to Miami to talk about: Cuba. Many have done it before and John McCain tried again Tuesday. Please don’t. Please don’t tell us how strong and brave the exiles are. Please don’t tell us, “Next year in Havana!”

We know Castro is an evil, nasty tyrant. We don’t need you dropping in to tell us. Whatever you do, for the love of God, please do not pick up any maracas. Don’t beat the bongos. Don’t put on a guayabera. Don’t try to dance ‘’salsa” (we prefer son, anyway).

It’s nice that you have Cuban friends. But we don’t want to know about José, who roomed with you in college. Don’t tell us about Pepito, who arrived in Miami with just two quarters in his pocket and a dream of freedom.

McCain, you want to hunt down and try Cuba’s leaders? Illness and old age already beat us to justice. History will beat us to judgment. Don’t tell us any more of what you think we want to hear. We’re weary of promises.

We know about the dissidents, the rafters, the hopelessness, the repression. Even those of us who aren’t Cuban know it better than you. We are married to Cubans, have Cuban in-laws, Cuban employees, Cuban bosses. Don’t tell us. But you can’t help yourselves. Something about South Florida — maybe it’s the weather, the accents, the sheer proximity — prompts even the best among us to lapse into Cuba talk.

END RESTRICTIONS

So if you must talk about Cuba, tell us something new. We all want elections and democracy. But even the most hard-line among us secretly acknowledge that our policies of confrontation have won nothing.

Start small. Start with the Bush travel restrictions. Stand up at that dinner or lunch that you won’t touch and say: ”When I’m elected, the first thing I’ll do is allow Cuban Americans to travel to the island. No restrictions, no conditions.” Your voice rising, say: “I will restore what no politician has the moral authority to take away: your right to set foot in your homeland; your right to give solace to your family; your right to hold your children, comfort your sick and bury your dead.”

You’ll be OK. Poll after poll says most Cuban Americans favor lifting the restrictions. And a group of exiles just filed suit in Vermont contesting the 2004 order.

This is your chance. If you must talk about Cuba, please spare us the condescending rhetoric. Then forget Havana and try addressing our more immediate problems here. Yes, even Cuban Americans worry about this country.

Surprise us. We may just end up surprising you.