Alberto Vázquez, 17, and Maikel Fonseca, 16, students at a military school, died on Christmas Eve from lack of oxygen and subfreezing temperatures during a flight by a London-bound British Airways jet. One of the bodies was found in a field near London's Gatwick Airport and the other was located still inside the plane's undercarriage. The two youths were seeking to go to the United States and apparently chose the wrong plane.

The Union of Young Communists (UJC) and student organizations sponsored the January 19 march. For three hours, protesters marched past the U.S. Interests Section. Large contingents of students participated, as did workers leaving their workplaces. The lead contingent included Cuban president Fidel Castro, armed forces minister Raúl Castro, Commanders of the Revolution Juan Almeida and Ramiro Valdés, UJC leader Otto Rivero, and Hassan Pérez, president of the Federation of University Students (FEU).

Demonstrators waved Cuban flags as they chanted, "Down with the murderous law." The focus of their protest was the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, under which the U.S. government grants legal residence to those who leave Cuba outside normal legal channels, usually by boat or raft.

Cuban citizens who make it to U.S. territory are automatically offered this status, while those picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard are repatriated, under the U.S.-Cuban immigration accords signed in 1994. This is what U.S. immigration officials crudely call their "wet feet, dry feet" policy.

From 1990 to 1994, some 105,000 people emigrated from Cuba, according to academic sources. Under the 1994 agreement, Washington agreed to extend at least 20,000 visas a year to Cubans applying to emigrate. From 1995 to last December, 133,800 Cuban citizens emigrated to the United States with visas, but the number applying to emigrate has been much greater.

The U.S. Border Patrol estimates that about 1,800 Cubans reached the United States without papers last year; in 1999 the figure was 2,300. By comparison, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service reports that last year it deported 149,000 Mexicans, 4,500 Hondurans, 4,400 Salvadorans, and 4,000 Guatemalans--and even larger numbers of undocumented workers entered the United States.

Over the past several months Cuba's revolutionary leadership has been campaigning to educate around, and mobilize opposition to, Washington's aggressive policies toward Cuba, particularly reactionary legislation such as the Cuban Adjustment Act and the Helms-Burton law. This political campaign began last year during Cuba's successful defense of its sovereignty in face of Washington's efforts to use the case of Elián González against the revolution.  
 
Embargo provision now in Bush's lap
Meanwhile, three days before leaving office, U.S. president William Clinton issued one more six-month waiver of a law allowing Cuban-Americans and other U.S. businessmen whose property on the island was expropriated by the Cuban revolutionary government to sue companies abroad "trafficking" in those properties.

The provision is Title III of the misnamed Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act, also known as the Helms-Burton law, which Clinton signed in 1996 to tighten Washington's now four-decade-long embargo against Cuba. Under the terms of the legislation, the U.S. president may suspend this provision for six-month periods if he certifies to Congress that the suspension "is necessary to the national interests of the United States and will expedite a transition to democracy"--meaning capitalism--in Cuba

In a January 18 article titled "Clinton tosses Bush a Cuba hot plantain," Time reporter Tony Karon noted, "President Clinton began using the waiver once the Europeans made clear that they would take the matter before the WTO [World Trade Organization], and seek retaliatory trade sanctions against the U.S." He added that "Clinton simply repeatedly postponed a confrontation by using his waiver," a tactic Washington has used as a tool in its ongoing trade conflicts with its imperialist rivals, especially in Europe and Canada.

The latest waiver expires in July, placing in Bush's hands the decision of what action to take.  
 
 
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