THE REAL CUBAN MAFIA

by Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton


The long-term negative labeling of Cuban Americans by the U.S. media echoes Castro’s propaganda by calling the Miami exile community the "Miami Mafia." That epithet, born in Castro’s Havana, has been an irritant to the exiled community not only in Miami but beyond.

The U.S. media willingly collaborates with a proven and admitted anti-American totalitarian far-left Fascist tyrant that converted Cuba into one of the seven terrorist nations. And they are giving him platform for this and other insults against a highly successful and law-abiding community that has been an asset to America. This is totally reprehensible.

There is nothing further from the truth than this malicious slur. For years I wanted to write about it, but it was not until I met former political prisoner Luis Grave de Peralta Morell and read his recently released book The Mafia of Havana that I was compelled to do so.

Grave de Peralta is a physicist who was a professor at Oriente University in the eastern part of Cuba. The Cuban government expelled him from his job and prohibited him from getting another, simply because he resigned his membership in the Communist Party of Cuba. Thus he had the time to research and bring together portions of Castro’s speeches made over the years - and his distinct contradictions.

The manuscript was confiscated and he was detained in 1992, accused of "rebellion through pacific means" and sentenced to 13 years at the dreaded Boniato and Kilo 8 prisons. This alone should give Americans an idea of how much freedom a citizen has under Castro’s boot.

Thanks to international pressure, the wife of France’s president, Francois Mitterrand, and a mission of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, in 1996, after four years in jail, he was taken directly from his cell, put on an U.S. Air Force plane with other political prisoners, and sent to this country. It was not his desire to leave Cuba but he felt it was the only way he could be a father to his two sons. However, his wife and two children were not allowed to come with him, although it was promised to Bill Richardson that they would follow shortly.

Castro’s promise was not fulfilled. Years passed and the families remained separated until April 2000 when his oldest son, Gabriel, was finally allowed to leave. But Castro still did not allow his younger son and his now former wife to reunite with him.

Paradoxically, Castro, who was portrayed by the U.S. media and his multiple apologists, fanatics and agents in this country as a concerned fighter on behalf of family reunification during the Elian Gonzalez affair, is historically nothing of the sort. Castro has been the greatest family separator in Cuba and perhaps in the Americas. There are literally millions of Cuban family members separated by the Castro regime.

But, Luis Grave de Peralta, now with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University, continued fighting for the reunification of his family against all odds.

The U.S. media denied him as well as other Cuban exiles in the same situation living in the U.S. - like Jose Cohen, separated from his wife and three children for seven years now - the same coverage that they willingly afforded to Castro’s puppets: Elian’s grandmothers and his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Joan Brown Campbell, Wayne Smith and U.S. Representatives like Maxine Waters, Barbara Jackson Lee, Charles Rangel, Jose Serrano and others.

This distorted, censored and unbalanced presentation of the facts to the American people prevents sympathy and public support for Grave de Peralta and other similar cases in the U.S. by removing the element of public pressure on Castro’s regime. Therefore, the U.S. media is guilty of contributing to maintaining his and other ongoing family separations in Cuba and the U.S. as well as extending the suffering of the Cuban people under a brutal terrorist regime.

Finally, Castro allowed 9 year old Cesar and his mother to board a plane for the U.S. on November 9, 2001. But at the last minute, they were removed from the chartered American Airlines plane in Cuba with the bogus excuse that there were irregularities with the papers inside the two sealed envelopes given to them by the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. These envelopes are to be opened only by immigration officials on U.S. soil.

The envelopes were apparently opened by an American employee of ABC Charters, William Boehmer, the "American" tour agency in charge of the trip. (Many of these agencies handling travel to and from Cuba are said to be front, making-money businesses of Castro in the U.S.)

After coming from Texas to Miami to be reunited with his family and waiting 11 excruciating hours at the Miami International Airport, unable establish telephone communication with his relatives in Cuba, at 10:00 p.m., Grave de Peralta was finally informed by a reluctant U.S. immigration officer that his family was not on the plane.

Because of job responsibilities, he had to return broken hearted to Texas.

But on November 16, 2001, Cesar and his mother were finally allowed to come to the U.S. The boy’s uncle, living in Miami for almost a year now, went to wait for them at the Miami airport for about seven hours. And on Thanksgiving Day, father and son were finally able to reunite in Texas.

During the Elian Gonzalez saga, on April 10, 2000, The Washington Post published on page A21, an article by Luis Grave de Peralta. But they requested that he remove his reference to the government in Havana as a Mafia type organization.

The Washington Post has demonstrated many times their lack of scruples by referring to the Cuban exile community in Florida as the "Miami Mafia’’ and other derogatory terms as well as publishing very insulting cartoons by the late Herblock. Therefore, it appears an oddity, their newly acquired scruples when dealing with the real Cuban Mafioso. Apparently, they are more respectful of Castro than his victims.

Grave de Peralta, who knows very well what Castro and his Mafia are capable of doing in Cuba and abroad, presents a very powerful recount of the history and actions of the "Maximun Leader" of the real Cuban Mafia in his recent book.

After reading his analysis of the events, I realized that the epithet "Miami Mafia" is even more unfair and outrageous that I had realized. The term "Mafia" accurately applies to Castro’s regime, his henchmen and the despotic and corrupt elite he has created in order to maintain his power, keeping the Cuban people as his slaves and hostages, and to intimidate and blackmail the rest of the world.

Considering the events of September 11, it is time to grow up. There should be no right or left. We are all Americans bound by the ideals of freedom, democracy and justice. We have to be realistic and see things as they really are and identify who the real bad guys are. September 11 showed us the consequences of playing political games, a lack of resolve and allowing our mortal enemies to infiltrate our institutions.

Castro and his Mafia organization installed themselves in power by lying and deceiving the world. It is an illegitimate regime composed of criminals ruled by an unscrupulous Godfather type character who set aside the Cuban Constitution of 1940 and never intended to give up power until his death and beyond.

And because of Castro’s ambition for total control, a war was declared against the will of the Cuban people since 1959 and over 100,000 have died. The revolution also died decades ago; what remains is a Mafia-ruled island. Castro’s reign of terror has physically and morally ruined Cuba.

The island formerly known as the "Pearl of the Antilles" was a very advanced and economically prosperous country. What is left of Cuba after almost 43 years of Castro rule is a plantation of terrified slaves with no place to go but to risk their lives trying to get to the U.S. on a raft. Cuba is no longer a country, it is a psychological nightmare for all forced to live inside that island prison with no end in sight.

The very well entrenched academics of the left in most of the learning centers in the U.S. have been very busy for years imposing their agenda based on obsolete Marxist philosophy. They have been a distorting and a negative influence on the new generations of Americans. Those colleges and universities have produced today’s media.

I believe that is the main root of their insensitive view of the victims of their Marxist icons and socialist systems.

No wonder they have to try to conceal the information that is contrary to their programmed beliefs. No wonder they refuse to see Castro as the real Mafioso, turn their backs on and excoriate his victims. No wonder they were so vicious during the Elian Gonzalez affair and did everything in their power to give Castro the victory. No wonder they refuse to publicize Grave de Peralta’s ordeal and the ongoing tragedy of Jose Cohen and other cases in the U.S. and abroad of families and children kidnapped by the Maximun Mafioso of the Americas.

But in view of the real facts about Castro and the dismal failure of Marxism, I ask those academics of the left and members of the U.S. media, is the real Cuban Mafia in Miami or Havana


Agustin Blazquez
2001 ABIP

Producer/Director of the documentaries

COVERING CUBA, COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation & the upcoming COVERING CUBA 3: Elian Author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book COVERING AND DISCOVERING

Este y otros excelentes atículos del mismo AUTOR aparecen en la REVISTA GUARACABUYA con dirección electrónica de:

www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org

Éste y otros excelentes artículos del mismo AUTOR aparecen en la REVISTA GUARACABUYA con dirección electrónica de:

www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org