The new mafias in the Cuban exiledom
The arrest of two smugglers in Miami confirms the reality of the kidnapping, extortion and murder in the traffic in humans
By Juan-Jose Fernandez Read Spanish Version
From the Spanish newspaper El País
Perhaps
the most-often repeated insult since the Revolution triumphed in Cuba
is the one that describes the other side of the Florida Straits as
"the Miami mafia." But the mafiosi left Cuba hand-in-hand
with Fulgencio Batista in 1959, and criminals existed, exist and will
exist forever everywhere.
In
the case of Cuba today, criminals are all those who foster and take
advantage of misery, pain and uprooting. In Cuba and outside. The new
grand mafia is national, it does not have sonorous Italian names and
surnames like the Lucky Luciano, Santo Trafficante and Amleto
Battisti half a century ago, but they are the usual Cubans of Spanish
origin. They have exchanged the casinos for the traffic in humans,
they are the transport workers for sentimental and economic needs,
whose criminal refinement goes side by side with drug trafficking,
kidnapping and murder. It is one of the many dark sides of the Cuban
tragedy. Prison sentences for smuggling, which used to extend to
several years in the United States, now reach life imprisonment for
the often punished crime of kidnapping.
Only
five months from the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, the
principal losers are the many broken-up families, the people who flee
their country in search of political or economic freedom. They have
struggled with government red tape, and many of them — tired of
waiting for the legal procedures, often torpedoed by the crossed
interests and the bureaucracy in Cuba and the United States — have
invented any which system to find a new life. The final toll they
must pay, amid so much wickedness — but also the first toll they
provoke — is the trafficking in humans.
It
is not new, because it began in the early days of the Revolution,
but, from those trips in the boats of friends and relatives, the last
variation has reached the worst extremes. What used to be a
well-known secret (because these were never pleasure cruises) has
come to light with eloquent proof, for the first time, in the courts
of Miami.
Niovel
Chirino, 33, and Lázaro Martínez, 21, have been charged
not only with trafficking in humans, like other smugglers before
them, but also kidnapping, extortion and death threats to pressure
the families of the passengers. South Florida prosecutors accuse them
of using eight persons as hostages and threatening one of them with
death, the only woman in the group, as well as telling the other two
that they were going to return them to Cuba or deliver them to
pirates who would dump them in the Gulf of Mexico.
Although
at first the judge set bail for Niovel at $500,000 and for Lázaro
at $30,000, both bails were withdrawn when the death threats became
known.
Saul
Scott, Niovel’s lawyer, said the charge of kidnapping is an
exaggeration and added that he had never seen anything like it in his
career. "From facing three years in prison to serving a life
sentence there is a small difference," he said. The trial is set
for early September; it will be the first, but may not be the last.
The
smugglers were caught because one of the kidnapped victims was the
cousin of a federal agent. According to prosecutors’ records, on June
15 a Miami airport employee received a telephone call from a man who
told him his cousin had entered the U.S. with seven other persons and
that he needed $10,000 to pay for the trip, the minimum charge for
tickets out of Cuba. The employee reported the call to the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and served as
intermediary. He contacted Niovel, who admitted he was holding the
Cubans. Plainclothes agents arranged for a meeting in a Walmart
parking lot (lots of space) in northwest Miami, where they arrested
the smugglers and freed the hostages, who were kept in a van.
Situations
like that used to be a "wetback deal," but the Cuban
transactions have gone way beyond. Passage is no longer paid only at
the end of a successful voyage; no longer do smugglers collect half
the fare in advance. But the connections remain — in Miami and in
Cuba. Anywhere exiled Cubans gather, you only need to say that you’re
interested in bringing someone out of the island, and someone will
approach you and start the negotiations.
In
Cuba, for example, you can phone Mr. Soto, aka Rollete. Arturo Cobo,
founder of the Transit Home, a historic organization that shelters
exiles, advertised Rollete’s phone number on television in Miami.
Days later, a program on Channel 41 confirmed that Rollete was a
contact.
Rodolfo
Frómeta, a former prisoner in Cuba and later in the U.S. (for
attempting to buy a bazooka to shoot Fidel Castro), phoned Cuba and
spoke with Rollete, faking a story. Even today, Frómeta
advocates "an armed solution" to Castroism. The roads of
Cuban exiledom are infinite.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/nuevas/mafias/exilio/
