User:Ramonsaul

Ramón Saúl Sánchez: el Gandhi del exilio cubano - Por Sonia Osorio, Agencia EFE
Tuesday, Jul 01, 2014 12:00

Ramón Saúl Sánchez: el Gandhi del exilio cubano

Por Sonia Osorio ~ Agencia EFE

Con escasos recursos financieros, enarbolando el principio de la no violencia y utilizando los ayunos como herramienta para su activismo, Ramón Saúl Sánchez se ha convertido en el rostro más visible del exilio cubano en EEUU.

"Tristemente mi patria vive la terrible soledad de la opresión, el desgarramiento de las familias y la violación de su soberanía. Desde que tuve uso de razón me di cuenta que no se puede vivir conociendo esa realidad cruzado de brazos", dijo.

Miami Journal; New Policy on Cubans Met by Protest Drive



A Cuban exile leader was on the telephone with a police lieutenant, coordinating arrangements for the day's demonstration, while in another room the Miami City Manager, Cesar Odio, warned organizers that if any protesters continued spitting at police officers, the city's efforts at nonconfrontation might prove in vain.

For the last two weeks the Little Havana headquarters of Brigade 2506, an association of veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion 34 years ago, has served as a planning center for a campaign of protests that have lured workers from their jobs and, for a time last week, blocked traffic on expressways. The demonstrations result from President Clinton's decision to return to Cuba all refugees who flee it by sea, a step that essentially pulls in a welcome mat that was out for three decades.

Today the conservative exile groups sponsoring the protests staged their biggest one yet: thousands of people heeded a call to walk off their jobs at 2 P.M. -- many small Cuban-owned businesses shut down at that hour in support -- and filled 13 blocks of Southwest Eighth Street in Little Havana for a march and a rally.

The mood was festive -- soft drinks and T-shirts were sold, Cuban flags were waved, and shouts of "Libertad!" pierced the air -- but the cause remained heart-wrenching.

"If they are willing to die at sea, it must be something horrible that they go back to," Rosa Bauza, 40, who left Cuba nine years ago, said of the rafters no longer admitted to the United States.

If the exiles have counted on the patience of city officials and the police, who have made few arrests and even acquiesced to some of the traffic disruptions, they have yet to win the widespread solidarity they seek.

The Clinton Administration's new policy is attributed by the demonstrators to a nationwide wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, and that sentiment is found even in the Miami metropolitan area, where more than half a million Cubans live and Hispanic immigrants are the dominant group.

A poll published on Monday by The Miami Herald found that most people here in Dade County, including 45 percent of Cuban-American respondents, supported "sharply" limiting immigration from Cuba. And even as the protesters sang Cuba's national anthem on the streets here today, Gov. Lawton Chiles, a Democrat who supports the Administration's policy, was in Haiti to offer the state's assistance in preventing "another mass immigration crisis" brought on by seagoing refugees from that nation.

In Dade County and elsewhere in the state, petitions are being prepared to put on the November 1996 ballot several initiatives that would limit government benefits to illegal immigrants. California's Proposition 187 is a model for this effort.

"We have 15,000 homeless, hungry Americans in Dade County," said Enos Schera of Citizens of Dade United, one of the groups gathering signatures. "Why would we want to import more misery?"

But many Cubans here, opposed to any dealings with Fidel Castro and favoring means like a naval blockade to bring him down, say they are offended by the Washington-Havana negotiations that led to the Administration's policy change. They fear more agreements between the two countries, and perhaps a loosening of the trade embargo that Mr. Castro blames for his country's ills.

"The United States is looking to stabilize Castro to prevent a migration crisis if he falls abruptly," said Ramon Saul Sanchez, a principal organizer of the protests. "But that's postponing the inevitable."

Mr. Sanchez, 40, once belonged to the Cuban exile paramilitary group Alpha 66 and says he served time in prison after refusing to answer a Federal grand jury's questions about a plot to kill Mr. Castro during a United Nations visit by the Cuban leader 15 years ago.

He was also the strategist behind the traffic jams created last week by small groups of Cuban protesters, who blocked streets and highways with their vehicles and their bodies. After a public outcry, the coalition of conservative exile organizations spearheading the protests apologized. But demonstrations of a less disruptive nature have continued.

In defense of their campaign, the protesters have invoked the memory of Martin Luther King and the civil disobedience of the 1960's. But blacks here seem among the most incensed over the traffic snarls and the tolerance shown by the police. Some say they remember when the police responded in riot gear to a peaceful demonstration by Haitians five years ago, clubbing and arresting many of the participants.

"The problem is not that we're against our Cuban brothers and sisters protesting -- we understand oppression," said the Rev. Victor Curry, pastor of the New Birth Baptist Church. "All we're saying is, Be fair."

Mr. Sanchez said the protests had succeeded in sending a message to the White House. He acknowledged that as yet there had been no response to that message but said the demonstrations would now escalate to another level: plans for a march in Washington, on a date not yet determined, and for a flotilla that is expected to cross into Cuban territorial waters on July 13 to commemorate the sinking of a tugboat off Havana's coast last summer, during the mass exodus. Forty Cubans died.

Photos: Cuban groups in Miami, protesting the Administration's new policy on refugees, staged their biggest demonstration yet in Little Havana yesterday. (Annette Thompson for The New York Times); Cuban flags were present almost everywhere at yesterday's protest. (Associated Press)