When I first went to prison in 1999, I had the opportunity to study God’s word.
I became convinced then that the most difficult task ahead of me was not to fight against human evil, injustice, and communism, but to try to become a better human being. I continue in that battle, sometimes with more mistakes than achievements.
I’ve learned to get up after every fall. And I have also learned to forgive all those who have wronged me, to be wary of the hypocrites and the butter opponents who have made the freedom of my homeland a business for their pockets and their insatiable egomanias. Having committed myself only to my conscience has allowed me to analyze the Cuban reality more calmly and objectively.
Contrary to what many think, forgiveness does not exclude justice.
Castroism has been disastrous for the entire Cuban nation. There were many Cubans who realized in time that there was no longer room for them and left immediately for exile. In short, “Homeland is humanity”, as José Martí rightly said, to which we could add: “Where there is fire and wine I have my home”, remembering Joan Manuel Serrat.
In the course of the already very long exile of Cubans, there has been no lack of notorious cases of “desertion” and “betrayal” – I use Castro’s terminology – of people who until the moment of the change in their position were fully identified with the Cuban dictatorship. But now, what was once the exception has become the rule.
Why do many hard-working, good Cubans come to the U.S.? It’s true. It is also true that very few of them, very few, fit the coat of “politically persecuted” to apply to the Cuban Adjustment Act. And in this sense, it must be recognized that since the enactment of that law until today, the different U.S. administrations have been very generous with Cubans.
The facts
In November 2021, coinciding with the worsening of the economic and political crisis that Cuba has systematically suffered since 1959 and with the significant increase in popular protests, Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship in Nicaragua, in collusion with the Cuban dictatorship, decided to open its borders to allow the free flow of Cubans to the southern border of the United States. Since then, it is estimated that more than 250,000 Cubans have entered this country through this route.
Cubans who chose to leave in that way were forced – and still are forced – to buy a round-trip plane ticket, so they had and have to pay more than $3000 dollars, a leonine price if we take into account the distance between the two countries. There were times when the tickets cost more than five thousand dollars, so we can imagine the substantial economic dividends that both dictatorships have obtained thanks to that decision, in addition to the fact that both are directly responsible for the strengthening of the mafias in charge of human trafficking.
Within this large group of Cubans, the number of former policemen, former members of the Ministry of the Interior, the Revolutionary Armed Forces, State Security, former party leaders, the People’s Power and the mass organizations of the so-called Cuban civil society, who are now living in this country, is striking.
Established in Kentucky is Arelis Casañola Quintana, former president of the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power of the Isle of Youth, former member of the municipal committee of the communist party of that territory, former leader of the Federation of Cuban Women and graduate of the Higher School of the “Ñico López” Party in the specialty of National Defense. Now Arelis is “a persecuted politician”.
Less than two months ago, Liván Fuentes Álvarez, who succeeded Arelis Casañola Quintana, arrived at an airport in Florida under the cover of the humanitarian parole program. Because the Immigration Service authorities had been warned about his background and links to the dictatorship, he was not allowed to enter.
On the southern border of the U.S. is Vanelis Marzo Cabrera, who was the first secretary of the communist party in the municipality of Regla, Havana. She is waiting for the interview that will allow her to enter this country because, now, she is also another “persecuted”.
In Brandon, La Florida, lives Anabel Campos de Castro, daughter of two notorious front men of the Cuban dictatorship in Guantánamo. Anabel, a graduate of the University of Computer Sciences (UCI), was the main witness for the prosecution in the trial against evangelical pastors Ramón Rigal and Ayda Expósito. Several opponents have said that since his work at the Guantánamo Youth Computer Club, he participated in smear campaigns against opponents. Now she is also another “politically persecuted”.
Tampa is home to Amalio Alfaro Matos, former president of the Criminal Chamber of the People’s Provincial Court of Guantánamo, who has presided over several trials against political opponents and has committed numerous injustices from that position. One of them was denying me the right to an appeal hearing in August 2021, when I was detained and savagely beaten by police in front of the Guantánamo municipal court, when I was trying to seek information about the trial of the evangelical pastors mentioned above.
On the Mexican border is the former Camagüey prosecutor Rosabel Roca Sampedro, who acted in several judicial processes against some of the citizens who participated in the protests of July 11, 2021. She is also waiting for the interview that will allow her to enter the U.S. because she is now another “politically persecuted.”
In La Florida, the young Yaiselys Darias Alonso, who until 2022 was the president of the Federation of High School Students (FEEM), in the province of Villa Clara, lives as a “politically persecuted”.
The last case that has had the greatest dissemination on social networks is that of former judge Melody González Pedraza, who presided over the People’s Municipal Court of Encrucijada, province of Villa Clara until a few months ago. Melody arrived at Tampa International Airport, Florida, as a beneficiary of the humanitarian parole program, but when she was denied entry she applied for political asylum. His case is pending a court decision.
In a report published last Saturday, June 29, 2024 by Cubanet, with the title “Former Cuban judge who requested asylum in the U.S. offers statements,” Melody quotes: “It is very difficult for people today to understand that I think differently, and it is very difficult to defend myself, because I have no physical evidence in my hands.”
Melody is right, it is very difficult to believe someone who until recently was a member of the repressive machinery of the dictatorship. I wonder: Why didn’t she quit her job as a judge when she discovered all the illegal things that were being done?
Any young university graduate can be assigned to a court with no experience whatsoever in the judicial career – another development that shows how deteriorated the administration of justice is – but it only takes two or three months of practice to learn that judges are not independent and that they have to hand down unjust sentences.
Yes, it is difficult to believe Melody now, after she was denied humanitarian parole, that she is another “politically persecuted”. But more difficult at this very moment is the life of the young people that she and many other judges have sanctioned and suffer from mistreatment, repression, lack of medical care and adequate food, in the prisons where they are held. The judges who serve the dictatorship do not know what a day, a single day, means in one of those prisons from which one comes out alive by pure miracle.
Melody’s testimony struck me as an out-of-tune “melody” crying out for compassion, something I don’t know if she ever felt when she was a judge.
Think wrong and you’ll be right?
At this point I recognize that no one has a soul calibrator to know if a person like those mentioned is really repentant.
We are not God and the only thing that counts are the facts. It is not in vain that it is stated in the Bible: “By the facts you will know them”. But by which ones, those of the past or those of now? If we take into account those of today are just words, on the other hand, in his past, there are actions that demonstrate his complicity with the dictatorship. Many times, faster than I would like, U.S. Immigration Service authorities believe them and do not check or follow up on each of these cases.
Behind this massive arrival of this type of people, previously very close to the dictatorship and today turned into “politically persecuted”, there may be something hidden. This question spurs me: “What if they are arriving in this country as part of a well-structured plan conceived by the dictatorship?”
Nothing happens by chance. Several news sites recently showed how behind the student protests at several universities around the world are people closely linked to radical forces on the left and Muslim extremists. Several of those people who have led such protests are not university students, but political agitators. Curiously, some of them visited Cuba shortly before the start of the protests and others, such as Manuel de los Santos, are very close to Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez. Unfortunately, the factory of useful fools still creates replicants.
Since the 1960s, Fidel Castro has managed to establish communist cards in the United States whose objective was to carry out terrorist attacks in case the U.S. army attacked Cuba. It may be a secret to no well-informed person that the Cuban dictatorship tried to annihilate American society through drugs, in alliance with Colombian drug traffickers and the narco-guerrillas of that country. Fidel Castro suggested to Nikita Khrushchev during the missile crisis that he take the initiative and launch a nuclear attack from Cuba to the U.S., then scandalous cases of espionage in favor of the Cuban regime have been discovered. China’s espionage program on the U.S. is known to have been established in Cuba, and there are still some U.S. politicians who claim that Cuba is not a danger!
Naivety is paid dearly in matters of political security. The short time I have lived in the U.S. I have been convinced that many Americans live totally oblivious to the magnitude of the danger that is brewing and growing in their own country.
The Cuban exile community should begin to develop a project to follow up on these people inside the U.S. It should focus on the search for information to have these people well located and demonstrate their true intentions so that, when the time comes, they can appeal to the Immigration Service so that they can be deported immediately to Cuba.
Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces
Note: The translation of this article from Spanish to English has been done by Google Translate.