Tag: Mariel boatlift

Mexican Historian’s Disavowal of Support for Fidel Castro

Enrique Krauze, a Mexican public intellectual, historian, author, producer and publisher, has written at least two fascinating essays about U.S.-Cuba relations.

U.S. Cuba at the Start of Obama’s Opening to Cuba [1]

Less than a month after the December 17, 2014, joint announcement of the U.S.-Cuba decision to seek better relations, [2] Krauze wrote that “Cuba has been the epicenter of anti-Americanism in modern Latin America. As a political ideology it was born during the Spanish-American War of 1898 [3]  [and] reached its height with the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.” Between those two years, “with some exceptions, the political, diplomatic and military balance sheet of the United States in Latin America was nothing short of disastrous.” In response, “the region . . . [had] a surge of nationalism.“

The success of the Cuban Revolution “opened a new cycle of intense anti-Americanism. . . . The rage thus engendered was the most effective weapon of survival for the repressive and dictatorial Cuban regime.” But the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the rise of democratic governments in some Latin American countries resulted in the [orphaning] of Latin American Marxists. “Only the great obstacle of the American boycott of Cuba has remained an outmoded and divisive force.”

“In [Obama’s] re-establishing relations with Cuba, the United States renounced its ‘imperial destiny’ and recovers much of the moral legitimacy needed to uphold the democratic values that led to its foundation (and also of the countries of Latin America). Obama’s action is meant for the good of all the Americas, including the United States. And freedom of expression in Cuba is an absolute necessity for its success. No people or country is an island unto itself. The Castro dynasty has kept Cuba as such for 56 years.”

Moreover, “acclaim for the [new] agreement is widespread in Latin America. By his historic announcement on Dec. 17, Obama has begun to dismantle one of the most deeply rooted ideological passions of the southern continent” and may have “begun the final decline” of Anti-Americanism in Latin America.

Krauze’s Disavowal of Fidel Castro [4]

According to Krauze, the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 “inspired political awareness in almost all the [Mexican] writers, activists and intellectuals of my generation [including Krauze himself]. Our university professors, contemporaries of Castro, saw in him the definitive vindication of [José Marti’s] ‘Our America’ against the other, arrogant and imperialist, America. The literary supplements and magazines we read — by Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes — celebrated the Revolution not only for its economic and social achievements, but also for the cultural renaissance it ushered in.”

Krauze’s enthusiasm for Fidel Castro turned to disappointment in 1968-69 when Cuba supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia while Mexican tanks were combatting student movements in Mexico. Yet it still was difficult in Mexico to criticize Cuba.

In 1980 Krauze had his “final break with Fidel Castro” when “hundreds of people stormed the Peruvian embassy in Havana, seeking asylum” and “more than 100,000 Cubans left the port of Mariel for the United States, revealing a fracture in Castro’s utopia.”

In July 2009 Krauze visited Cuba “and was captivated by its natural beauty and the ingenuity and warmth of its people” and discovered in books that before the Revolution, “Cuba had a rich and diversified economy. In 1957, Cuba had around 6,000,000 heads of cattle, well above the world’s per capita average. . . . [In short] Cuba was already one of the most advanced countries in Latin America in 1959.”

But in 2009, “cows are so scarce that killing one carries a multiyear prison sentence. Not too long ago, in order to eat beef legally, farmers ‘accidentally’ sacrificed them by tying them to train tracks.”

At his trial in 1953, “Fidel famously declared, ‘History will absolve me.’ That’s no longer a sure thing. An awareness of freedom awakens sooner or later when faced with the obvious excesses of authoritarian rulers. If history examines his regretful legacy through that lens, it may not absolve him.”

With few exceptions, “Latin American historians and intellectuals . . . have refused to see the historical failure of the Cuban Revolution and the oppressive and impoverishing domination of their patriarch. But the parlous situation in Venezuela — with Cuba as a crutch — is undeniable, and the Cuban reality will be increasingly hard to bear. This has been Lenin’s decade. Perhaps the next one will belong to [Cuban patriot José] Martí.”

President Obama’s opening to Cuba in December 2014 inspired hopes that this would come to pass. “Unfortunately, the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, has marred any possibility of conciliation, which has further isolated Cuba and so perpetuated Castroism.”

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[1] Krauze, End of Anti-Americanism?, N.Y. Times (Jan. 7, 2015).

[2] U.S. and Cuba Embark on Reconciliation, dwkcommentaries.com (Dec. 21, 2014).

[3] U.S. Intervention in Cuba’s War of Independence from Spain, 1898, dwkcommentaries.com (Aug. 26, 2019); U.S. De Facto Protectorate of Cuba, 1898-1934, dwkcommentaries.com (Aug. 27, 2019).

[4] Krauze, My Sixty Years of Disappointment with Fidel Castro, N.Y. Times (Aug. 21, 2019

Other Current Developments Regarding Cuban Migrants to U.S

When the U.S. decided on January 12 to end immediately the “dry foot/wet foot” immigration policy, as discussed in a prior post, two groups of Cubans faced immediate consequences.

First, many Cubans are stranded in Mexico or Central America unable to be allowed into the U.S. without a visa. Now many of them are waiting in place on the hope that Donald Trump after his January 20 inauguration will reverse the January 12 cancellation of that policy or make an exception for those in limbo.[1]

Alternatively if any of them are fleeing “persecution” in Cuba, they first must satisfy a “credible fear” test at the U.S. border and then subsequently apply for asylum in the U.S. They, however, will generally be held in immigration detention for potentially months and success is far from guaranteed. It can take years for asylum to be granted given the crushing caseloads for U.S. asylum officers and immigration judges.

Second, also affected is a group of Cubans known as Marielitos who are in the U.S., and whose situation requires a historical explanation.[2]

From April through October 1980, pursuant to Fidel Castro’s decision, nearly 125,000 Cubans were allowed to leave the island by boat from the port of Mariel on the north coast of the island west of Havana. Most were law-abiding, but some had just been released, by Fidel’s orders, from Cuban prisons and mental institutions. Within a few years after their arrival in the U.S. almost 3,000 of the “Marielitos” were in U.S. prisons after convictions for committing new and serious crimes in the U.S.

The Cuban government in 1984 agreed to take back 2,746 of these criminal Marielitos. But the U.S. deportations were slow and in some years did not take place at all. At one point, Marielitos who had been awaiting deportation for years rioted in several cities.

Now nearly 250 of this group of 2,746 have died, and, by June of last year, 478 of the original 2,746 remained in the U.S., but some of this smaller group are elderly or very ill, and the U.S. government has lost interest in deporting some of them.

The January 12, 2017, agreement between the U.S. and Cuba allows the U.S. to deport or remove up to 500 of the 2,746 Marielitos and send them back to Cuba, which agreed to accept them. Moreover, Cuba has agreed to accept other Marielitos who have been convicted of crimes in the U.S. as part of this group of 500, but were not part of the original group of 2,746.

I have a personal connection to one of the Marielitos. Before I retired from practicing law in June 2001, I was appointed by Minnesota’s federal court to represent, pro bono, one of them who was in immigration detention at the federal government’s medical facility in Rochester, Minnesota (the site of the famous Mayo Clinic). He had been convicted of a serious crime in Rhode Island, as I recall, and after completion of his criminal incarceration, the U.S. put him in immigration detention for deportation or removal to Cuba, but Cuba would not accept him back. Although he was not an attorney, he had filed, pro se, a habeas corpus petition with Minnesota’s federal court, and my task, as his pro bono attorney, was to analyze and submit a legal brief in support of that petition. I did so.

Before the government submitted a response to my legal brief and before the court had to make a decision on the petition, the U.S. government decided to permit my client’s release from immigration detention. At the Rochester medical facility, he was suffering from a terminal disease, and I believed the government’s decision for his release was not based on the quality of my legal arguments, but on its desire to reduce its costs of keeping him in that facility.

Not long after my “successful” representation of this Marielito and his release from the Rochester facility, my legal argument was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), holding that the Constitution did not permit the U.S. to detain indefinitely immigrants under order of deportation whom no other country will accept. To justify detention of immigrants for a period longer than six months, the government was required to show removal in the foreseeable future or special circumstances.

Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court decided, 7-2, in Clark v. Martinez, 543 U.S. 371 (2005), that the Zadvydas decision applied to Marielitos, whose return Cuba would not permit.

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[1] Assoc. Press, Cuban Migrants Steps From US Border Hope for Trump Solution, N.Y. times (Jan. 14, 2017); Assoc. Press, US Policy Change on Cuban Migrants Leaves Many Stranded, N.Y. Times (Jan. 13, 2017).

[2] Robles, ‘Marielitos’ Face Long-Delayed Reckoning: Expulsion to Cuba, N.Y. times (Jan. 14, 2017); Mariel boatlift, Wikipedia; Greenhouse, Supreme Court Rejects Mariel Cubans Detention, N.Y. Times (Jan. 13, 2005); Zadvydas v. Davis, Wikipedia; Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001); Clark v. Martinez, Wikipedia; Clark v. Martinez, 543 U.S. 371 (2005).