The Militant - December 9, 2002 -- Reality check for ‘Miami Herald’ editors

Vol.66/No.46 December 9, 2002

Reality check for
‘Miami Herald’ editors

BY JACK WILLEY
On November 13, Víctor Dreke spoke at a broadly sponsored public meeting of 250, largely students, at Florida International University’s north campus in Miami. It was the first time a leader of the Cuban Revolution has spoken in that city. The day before he had addressed an equally successful event at the University of South Florida in Tampa (see coverage in last week’s Militant).

A week later, the Miami Herald ran an editorial titled, "A revolutionary visits FIU: University had little advance notice." The editors plaintively called the fact that Dreke spoke in Miami "disappointing and troubling."

The Herald editors complained, "Most worrisome is the fact that the State Department issued a visa to Víctor Dreke Cruz, a former security official from a country on the U.S. terrorism list....The lapse highlights the State Department’s continuing inability to screen properly those entering this country."

Fifteen or 20 years ago, such a meeting would likely not have been possible. Rightist forces hostile to the Cuban Revolution, backed by the government, would have intimidated academic forces from inviting Dreke, and any public meeting would have been physically assaulted and disrupted.

This time, demands by rightists on the university to cancel the event failed. Despite days of campaigning on local radio stations, ultrarightists were unable to muster more than a couple dozen counterprotesters, and would-be disrupters inside the auditorium were deflated by the breadth of the speakers platform and the role of numerous students in defending the meeting.

The Herald editorial admits, in effect, that Miami’s wealthy rulers were unable to prevent Víctor Dreke--a commander of the Cuban Revolution--from speaking on what they view as their turf. In a telling sign of weakness, they are reduced to appealing to the State Department to deny visas to such visitors before they can get to Miami.

University president "Modesto Maidique defended the visit as an exercise in academic freedom and freedom of speech.... He is right," the editorial concedes. In past decades, of course, Miami authorities often did not bother to give lip service to free speech. They backed ultrarightists who would routinely brand as "communist" anyone who disagreed with them and righteously claim they had been "provoked" into a physical assault by their victim.

Times have changed, more than the Herald editors even realize.

Related article:
In New England, revolutionary leader speaks on truth about Cuba and Africa

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