Only in Miami – the crime of op-ed fiction

By Amaury Cruz

An op-ed piece titled “Only in Cuba – the crime of ‘dangerousness,’” by Eduard Freisler, described as “a Czech journalist who lives in New York (The Miami Herald, December 12, 2010), brings to mind an experience I had following a visit to Cuba as a writer/photographer for a Washington-based magazine in April 1980 to report about the Mariel boatlift. I had not returned to Cuba since my family brought me to Miami in 1961, and despite my desire to remain objective, it was inevitable that some of the constant propaganda would instill in me certain pre-conceived notions about the Cuban reality.

I was surprised, among other things, that I was able to get around Havana freely, without anyone following me or any government official bothering me in any way despite the tense atmosphere existing at the time. I hooked up with a childhood friend of my wife, a writer who had been a professor of Marxism at the University of Havana but had fallen in disgrace and was a critic of the regime. With him as a guide, we went to the theater, a University lecture, a movie, and meetings with friends and colleagues. As part of my work, I interviewed people, observed demonstrations, walked the streets with a camera hanging from my neck, and took lots of pictures. I never felt like I imagine people had felt in the Soviet Union or its eastern European satellites during their darkest periods.  People seemed happy, free to speak their minds, eager to talk with me and other foreigners, friendly and carefree. That was unexpected. Not to mention that I never saw a beggar or children with swollen bellies, or abandoned children, or emaciated people, as is common in so many Latin American countries. I did see a lot of music, dancing and partying.

Upon my return, my wife (a writer at El Nuevo Herald) and I invited a number of reporters, editors and academic types to our home for a party. I shared my experiences with them. At one point, I mentioned that I had gone to Coppelia, the famous ice-cream parlor, and had to stand in a long line, and that the malecon seemed to be a gathering place for lots of young people at night. One well-known reporter wondered out loud how that was possible, since “everyone knew” that the government did no allow meetings of three or more people. What “everyone knew,” of course, was false.

Since then, I have been back to Cuba half a dozen times both as a researcher and for family visits. I have made friends in Cuba and I have visited many cities and towns.  People still gather at the malecon and stand in line at Coppelia, and despite great economic hardship, still dance and manage to have a good time. They certainly don’t hold back in expressing their opinions. I have concluded that one reason, perhaps the main reason, why some oppose opening travel to Cuba is that Americans would be able to see for themselves what Cuba is really like. (While it is not a socialist paradise, neither is it hell on earth, as some would have it.) They would then find that op-ed pieces like Mr. Freisler’s, and so much more appearing in the local press, do not ring true. People do gather in large groups, unmolested. And if anything like what Mr. Freisler describes took place, it must have been an aberration, not the rule.

Mr. Freisler tells a story of his Cuban brother-in-law Vladimir being arrested simply for walking with him, a foreigner, down a street in Havana in 2006, and again when Mr. Freisler and Vladimir were stopped during a car trip to Guantanamo in May 2007. I know not the circumstances of either arrest, but the part about the car stop raises questions about Mr. Freisler’s credibility. “A police patrol stopped me for speeding,” Mr. Freisler writes. “I paid the ticket, but on my way back to the car Vladimir was nowhere to be seen.”

I have also been stopped by the police for speeding and other reasons in Cuba, and I can tell you, from personal experience, it doesn’t work like that. One doesn’t pay a ticket on the spot. If Mr. Freisler had meant to say that he paid a bribe, I’m sure he would have said so, as it would have accorded with the meme that Cuba is bad. But he didn’t, so he doesn’t make sense. As a visitor to Cuba, Mr. Freisler must have been driving a rental.  To get a rental, one must leave a substantial deposit. If one gets a ticket in Cuba, the police write down the details on the rental agreement to notify the rental company. The fine is deducted from the deposit upon the return of the rental car.  Theoretically, one can later challenge the ticket in court and try to get the money back.  As is the case in the U.S., good luck with that. But that’s how it works. I can only conclude that Mr. Freisler is not fully truthful about the ticket on the highway to Guantanamo. This raises questions concerning the whole story about Vladimir. To me, the whole op-ed piece, with its stilted dialogues and tales of irrational police behavior, reads like fiction. In my experience, traffic cops in Cuba have been very serious and professional. They are not inclined to enter into a dialogue about Czech cars or the relative merits of capitalism and socialism, as Mr. Freisler sets forth. Perhaps his op-ed is an exaggeration with some nugget of truth. Perhaps it leaves out relevant background. (I wanted to offer a link to the op-ed for readers to judge for themselves, but the Herald did not post it online.)

Why exaggerate or lie, or give us only a partial or distorted truth, as the Herald often does when it comes to Cuba? There are many things to legitimately criticize about Cuba, including its record on civil liberties. I also question Cuba’s refusal to allow Miami Herald reporters into the island. Yes, the Herald has an editorial policy on Cuba of “all bad, all the time.” Still, I think if more reporters and editors were there, eventually a fuller, more accurate picture would come out and they would better recognize hatchet jobs in their opinion pages for what they are, as well as perhaps accurately criticize what needs criticism. This is no excuse, of course, for the Herald to continue to publish so much drivel about Cuba.

By the way, the equivalent to the crime of dangerousness was first established in the U.S. through the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. It has reincarnated in the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which passed the House but not yet the Senate, and has been described by liberal and conservative commentators alike as establishing “thought crimes.” Such are the results of legislation based on “fear and trembling, a sickness onto death” (to borrow from Kierkegaard), whether here or in Cuba. The latter, however, has lived for fifty years under an obsessive policy of regime change by the most powerful nation in the world; the fear is not groundless.

Amaury Cruz is a lawyer, writer, and political activist from Miami Beach.