It’s time to allow the ‘balseros’ to return
Al’s Loupe
It’s time to allow the ‘balseros’ to return
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
alvaro@progresoweekly.com
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a letter written from a Birmingham jail in 1963.
There is a huge injustice being committed right now by Cuban authorities. There is a certain group of Cubans who is not being allowed to visit the island. Some simply want to visit a family member who they have not seen in more than a decade; others to hug a dying mother, maybe for the last time; or it’s just a person who’s been away long enough and would like to feel the Cuban earth under his feet…
I am referring to who have been termed as ‘balseros’ (or raft people) who left the country illegally and have not been able to return – some to visit a wife, a child or children.
I am involved with the case of a man right now, who left on a raft in 2005. Let’s call him Rudy. He’s 42. He’s never been in trouble – neither here in the U.S., where he now lives, nor during his 30-plus years of life on the island.
He took to the seas in 2005 because he wanted a better life for his family. Rudy has a wife and two daughters – still in Cuba. His mother is still there too (he’s an only child). The last time he saw his youngest daughter she was two. In the U.S., he will tell you, he knew he’d be able to work and send money to the family. He lives here alone. And as a normal human being, he misses his mother, wife and two daughters dearly. Rudy’s never told me, but I have no doubt that tears of sadness, and what must feel like a shrinking heart, is part of his daily bread.
Then there’s the case of a friend I’ll refer to as Hector. He’s not a balsero. But in 1991, Hector played softball for the Cuban team and defected. He stayed – I think he told me it was Panama. He now lives in Miami.
Hector, too, is an only child. He lives alone. He yearns to again see his mother. She is now 75-years-old. She lives in Havana. Hector’s another one who has never been in trouble. In fact, he could easily be considered a model citizen wherever he’s lived. His mother, a retired attorney, gave three years of her life to her country. She served honorably in Angola.
I speak to Hector over the phone, probably once every few weeks. The conversations, I can honestly say, bring tears to my eyes. And it’s not because Hector complains, he doesn’t. The pain is prevalent in his voice, though. And anyone who loves his or her family would also get choked up when you hear him speak of wanting to see his mother – who he hasn’t visited for two decades now.
There are thousands of Hectors and Rudys here in the U.S. and around the world who dream of returning to visit family members or their best friend still in Cuba. For reasons that are nebulous, at least to me, they have not been able to. And that, to my eye, is an injustice. It’s inhumane. It’s cruel.
This is how the Cuban authorities have explained it to me. In 1994, during the Clinton Administration, Cuba and the U.S. came to terms on an immigration policy, which carries over till today. One of the many problems they were tackling was an attempt to quell the “illegal” exit of Cubans from the island trying to make it to U.S. shores. Based on that agreement, in the late 1990s, a White House official, in a conversation with Cuban Ambassador in Washington Dagoberto Rodriguez, warned that a massive exodus of balseros could be construed as an act of aggression against the U.S. and therefore an act of war.
I can understand this conversation creating a feeling of unease among Cuban officials. Remember, we’re dealing with the most powerful country on earth, which has demonstrated it feels the right to enter sovereign lands to solve other’s problems according to their (U.S.) terms. Therefore, I tend to give the Cubans good reason to consider balseros, who leave illegally, a worrisome act for the safety of the country.
Based on U.S. logic, then, I can also construe their wet-foot/dry-foot policy as an act of aggression by the U.S. against Cuba in that it stimulates illegal exits: find a way of getting here and you may stay, they appear to be saying. I also question how the U.S. would consider these persons dangerous for visiting their country of origin. Remember these are individuals who arrived here by illegal means and were accepted by the U.S. government, which allowed them to establish themselves here. Or does Washington consider these visits as a message of encouragement to more illegal departures from Havana?
But I am not here to determine which country is right in this case. More importantly is to come to a sensible and humane solution to what I consider a tragedy. And that is the fact that there are hundreds and thousands of Cubans being denied the right to visit a family member – because the two sides seem to be playing a game of political chicken…
Whatever the case, since 2004, I have been involved with the right of family members to visit each other on both sides of the Florida Straits. And in my eyes, these family ties trump politics almost every single time.
Hector and Rudy, and many others like them, have every right on earth to visit their respective mothers and family members. My promise to them, and I write this humbly, is that I will be fighting for them until a solution is reached.
