BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
MIAMI - At a September 9-10 meeting here, the National Network on Cuba (NNOC) discussed plans for building a national mobilization October 14-21 in opposition to U.S. policy toward Cuba, and stepping up other efforts to defeat legislation pending in Congress that would tighten the economic embargo of Cuba.
"End the U.S. Economic Blockade of Cuba," "Lift the Travel Ban," "Normalize Relations with Cuba," and "Respect Cuba's Right to Self-determination" are the main demands of the national actions, called earlier this year by the Network. There will be regional mobilizations October 14 in Chicago and San Francisco and October 21 in New York City. Local actions in Atlanta, Miami, Oklahoma City, and several other places will also occur on the 14th.
The New York march was originally scheduled to take place October 14 as well. The date was changed in July when it became known that both U.S. president Bill Clinton and a representative of the Cuban government would address the United Nations General Assembly October 22 in New York City at the opening of the UN's 50th anniversary commemoration. Holding the march the day before Clinton's speech will help focus the fire of the protest on Washington's policies, organizers decided.
Participants in the NNOC meeting voted to use the activities around the country on the 14th to encourage the maximum numbers possible to take part in the New York march.
Leslie Cagan of the Cuba Information Project, and one of the four national coordinators of the Network, reported that the executive board of Local 1199 of the hospital workers union in New York has endorsed the October 21 action.
The National Network on Cuba is a coalition of local and national groups that organize activities in opposition to U.S. policy toward Cuba. Some 55 people attended the Miami meeting, representing 37 different organizations. Four new groups were voted into membership, bringing the total number of affiliates to 73.
The newly admitted organizations are the Cuba Coalition of Houston; the Peace for Cuba Task Force-South Bay in the San Francisco area; the Coalition in Solidarity with Cuba in Salt Lake City, Utah; and the Greensboro Cuba Committee in North Carolina.
Helms-Burton bill
A major point of discussion at the meeting was on
organizing lobbying of congresspeople in local areas to
defeat legislation, introduced in Congress by Senator Jesse
Helms and Representative Dan Burton, that would
significantly tighten Washington's economic embargo of Cuba.
The bill could come to a vote before the end of the year.
The October actions and the lobbying effort were also the focus of a press conference Network coordinators gave here September 9. Most participants at the meeting were also present. The event was covered by El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language edition of the Miami Herald, the main daily here, as well as three TV channels.
"A national coalition that advocates the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba announced on Saturday in Miami a campaign to oppose the economic embargo against the island and the Helms-Burton bill that would tighten it," said the Herald article, which also reported on the October actions.
The news conference took place on the first anniversary of the immigration accord signed by the governments of the United States and Cuba. The agreement ended Washington's policy of denying visas to Cubans who wanted to emigrate to the United States while at the same time encouraging illegal entries. Cubans who hijacked boats or planes or crossed the Florida Straits in homemade rafts were welcomed for decades as heroes when they reached U.S. soil.
After a series of boat hijackings and other provocations in Cuba last summer, Havana said it would lift all restrictions on those who wanted to leave without a U.S. visa. Some 30,000 took to the sea in rafts hoping to reach the shores of Florida. This created a crisis for the Clinton administration.
The White House tightened travel restrictions to Cuba, sent U.S. Navy ships that intercepted the rafters, and then incarcerated the Cubans on the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo. But as the rafters continued to leave the island and hundreds of thousands of Cubans poured into the streets in huge mobilizations to counter the U.S.-engineered provocations, Washington conceded and signed the immigration accord with Havana.
After repeated protests against the concentration camp conditions to which the Cuban detainees were subjected on U.S. bases, Washington was forced to sign a second treaty May 2. This agreement, which registered another small step toward normalizing relations between the U.S. and the Cuban governments, allowed all detainees at Guantánamo to eventually immigrate to the United States.
So far, the U.S. government has stuck with the accord, granting visas to some 20,000 Cubans in the last 12 months.
Changes among Cubans in Miami
"Since last year there have been more positive changes
in the relations between the United States and Cuba than in
the previous 35 years," said Andrés Gómez at the press
conference. Gómez is the chairperson of the Antonio Maceo
Brigade, a Miami-based organization of Cuban-Americans who
support the Cuban revolution, and one of the NNOC national
coordinators.
During the news conference and at the meeting itself, there was discussion on the changes in the Cuban community in Miami.
Gómez said right-wing Cuban organizations in Miami have experienced political fissures in the last year, opening up more elbow room for those who oppose the U.S. embargo and seek normalization of relations with Cuba.
Gómez announced that the Cuban American Defense League (CADL), a civil rights group, has launched a campaign to press the federal government to bring charges against three Cuban-Americans who were caught in November 1994 attempting to firebomb the offices of the Alliance of Workers in the Cuban Community (ATC) in Miami. The three are members of the November 30 Movement, a paramilitary group based in Florida, which was infiltrated by the FBI. The ATC is an organization of Cubans living in the United States who are opposed to the embargo.
"Even though the FBI knew in advance about the attack, and caught the perpetrators `red handed,' no one has been charged with any federal offenses," said a September 8 press release by the CADL. "These thugs and the organization they belong to violated federal civil rights laws, and should be charged with criminal offense" under federal law.
The rightist Cuban American National Foundation, headed by Jorge Mas Canosa, fully backed Clinton's measures last year, including the internment of Cubans at Guantánamo and the prohibition of family visits to the island. "For this reason," Gómez said, "they lost support among Cubans who are opposed to the revolution."
Gómez pointed to the formation of Cambio Cubano last year, an organization of Cuban-Americans who oppose the revolution but also oppose the embargo. The group is headed by Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, who recently visited Havana, where he had a meeting with Cuban president Fidel Castro.
Menoyo, who participated in the armed struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, turned against the revolutionary government that came to power after the overthrow of the U.S.-backed regime. Menoyo left for Miami in the early 1960s and formed the Alpha 66 paramilitary organization. He was captured in Cuba in 1968 while carrying out terrorist acts; he was convicted and imprisoned for 22 years, returning to Miami after his release.
"Many others like Menoyo have begun to raise their voices against Mas Canosa," said Gómez. "Even though their aim remains the demise of the revolution, they are against the embargo and the travel restrictions."
Future solidarity projects
The Network meeting also discussed the impact of the
Cuba Lives International Youth Festival, which took place in
Havana and several other Cuban provinces in early August.
Among the solidarity campaigns decided on by festival
participants were the organization of speaking tours of
Cuban youth leaders around the world and international work
brigades to Cuba.
The NNOC meeting agreed to encourage Network affiliates to support and build these campaigns.
The NNOC also decided to set up a task force to organize a youth brigade to Cuba in the summer of 1996. A dozen different political organizations and local coalitions that belong to the Network volunteered to be part of this task force.
Representatives of several member groups, reported on plans for other trips and material aid campaigns to Cuba. The Detroit-based U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange, for example, is organizing delegations of trade unionists to Cuba in November and in April. The spring trip will coincide with the national convention of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers. The Venceremos Brigade is also organizing its 27th contingent to Cuba in April.
The IFCO/Pastors for Peace Friendshipment is planning its next caravan of humanitarian aid to Cuba in late January. This time, the trip will concentrate on the West Coast.
A representative of the Freedom to Travel Campaign reported that the lawsuit initiated by the Bay Area group to challenge the constitutionality of U.S. travel restrictions was scheduled to be heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on September 11.
In June 1994, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control blocked the Freedom to Travel Campaign's $50,000 account, just days before the group's scheduled departure for Cuba. The Campaign responded by bringing the lawsuit, which was dismissed by a federal district court last December.
Although the group's funds were subsequently released, the plaintiffs, represented by a team of lawyers headed by attorney Michael Krinsky, decided to appeal the lower court's decision and move forward with the suit on constitutional grounds.
The NNOC set its next national meeting for February 10- 11 in Los Angeles.