[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 130 (Thursday, September 25, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1864-E1865]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             CARMEN FRANCO TRIMINO'S HEART IS STILL IN CUBA

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ESTEBAN EDWARD TORRES

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 25, 1997

  Mr. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, there is no subject which when brought to 
this floor invokes more passion and hostility than the question of 
United States-Cuban policy. My colleagues who support the current 
United States policy of embargo, vehemently denounce any effort to 
improve relations between our two nations, until and unless the current 
President of Cuba departs. Those advocating alternative policies and 
new relationships with the people and the Government of Cuba, have to 
face having their integrity, patriotism, and intelligence called into 
question. My colleagues who defend the current United States policy 
toward Cuba are loyal and persistent defenders of their beliefs, and 
yet the anger and fury which they invoke, many times prevents and 
inhibits an open and free discussion of this important national policy 
issue. I believe that this institution and this country desperately 
need an honest, open and fair discussion on the goals, achievements, 
and impact of our current policy of embargo. As a contribution to this 
end, I wish to enter into the Record, a recently published editorial 
from the Arizona Republic. This article tells a story about one woman's 
crusade to bring change, heart, and humanity to our country's policy 
toward Cuba. Its subject is Carmen Franco Trimino, a successful 
entrepreneur, whose steel plating and powder coating business has 
operations in both Arizona and southern California. She is in 
Washington today, trying to win over some hard hearts in the United 
States Congress, seeking support for a bill which I introduced, H.R. 
1951, the Cuban Humanitarian Trade Act of 1997, which would permit 
United States trade with Cuba in the areas of foods, medicine, and 
medical supplies. I urge my colleagues to read Ms. Trimino's story, and 
I commend her for her valiant and tireless efforts on behalf of both 
the Cuban and the American people. I would leave my colleagues with a 
question to ponder which Ms. Trimino raises: ``Does our hatred for 
Castro and his Communist system so blind us that we are willing to 
allow a humanitarian tragedy of immense proportions to unfold 90 miles 
off our shores, just in hopes it will overthrow him?''
  Mr. Speaker, I believe that the United States is capable of a more 
enlightened, more humanitarian, more just policy toward the people of 
Cuba. I urge my colleagues to revisit this issue by reading the 
following story about Ms. Trimino, and then I urge my colleagues to 
join with me, and 69 other Members of the House of Representatives, in 
removing from United States policy the restriction over the sales of 
foods and medicine to Cuba.

               [From the Arizona Republic, Aug. 17, 1997]

  U.S. Sanctions Are Crippling Health Care--People, not Castro, Feel 
                                Effects

                            (By James Hill)

       It has been years since Carmen Franco Trimino moved body 
     and soul to the United States. But her heart is still in 
     Cuba.
       A successful entrepreneur, whose steel plating and powder 
     coating business has operations in both Arizona and Southern 
     California, Trimino now devotes much of her time and 
     seemingly all of her energies to win over some pretty hard 
     hearts in the U.S. Congress on an issue that is breaking 
     hers: the part of the U.S. economic embargo against Fidel 
     Catro's regime that has essentially cut off the importation 
     of foods and medicines into her native land.
       She's not winning, yet. But she's not losing, either.
       This summer, her lobbying paid off when 12 members of the 
     House of Representatives, ranging along the ideological 
     spectrum from Democrats Esteban Torres of California and 
     Charles Rangel of New York to Republicans Jim Leach of Iowa 
     and Ron Paul of Texas, agreed to sponsor a bill that would 
     specifically exempt food and medicines from the

[[Page E1865]]

     embargo. Since the bill was introduced, 44 other members have 
     signed on as co-sponsors, again representing the range of the 
     ideological spectrum.
       The Cuban Humanitarian Trade Act of 1997 would overturn a 
     particularly insidious clause in the Cuban Democracy Act of 
     1992 that made the importation of foods and medicines 
     technically not illegal, but so bureaucratically complex as 
     to amount to a de facto secondary embargo.
       The 1992 legislation was sold as a means of putting the 
     squeeze on Castro and his Communist government after Cuba's 
     long-time patron, the Soviet Union, had collapsed, wiping out 
     more than 70 percent of the island nation's trade. Rather 
     than constricting Castro, whose regime remains as 
     unrepentantly communist as ever, it slowly began to sap the 
     strength of average Cubans.
       The Periodo Especial, as Cubans refer to the miserable hand 
     that life has dealt them, strictly rationed everything, from 
     food to gasoline to times when electricity and other utility 
     services are available. Work schedules were altered to 
     account for the breakdown in public transportation 
     facilities, and school days were shortened. Bicycles became a 
     principal way of getting about.
       Then Castro pulled another fast one on his Yankee 
     tormentors. He pegged the peso to the U.S. dollar, opened the 
     doors to tourism (but for only a few Americans, thanks to the 
     embargo) and allowed a measure of free enterprise to not only 
     exist, but flourish.
       When I accompanied a delegation led by Trimino last 
     November to inspect the effect the embargo was having on 
     health care facilities, I was stunned to find a country that 
     was enjoying a 7 percent growth rate, a building boom in 
     parts of Havana and in regions designated to handle the 
     influx of tourists, and a general sense that the worst of the 
     Periodo Especial, or special period, was over.
       Yet, there were plenty of caution flags that it wasn't; 
     indeed, that perhaps the worst was yet to come.
       For one, a Foreign Ministry official confided that the 7 
     percent growth rate was relevant only when one gauged how far 
     Cuba had fallen. Cubans with access to dollars could shop for 
     food in well-stocked markets, including the supermarket once 
     reserved for members of the Soviet diplomatic corps.
       But those who were still in the internal economy, where the 
     unofficial peso is little more than script, were at the mercy 
     of the state-run systems, where shelves were empty save for 
     rice and beans.
       More telling, however, were my conversations with several 
     doctors and other medical personnel throughout the island. 
     Cubans take great pride in the medical system they built from 
     scratch since Castro came to power in 1959. And discussions 
     would always begin with the typical boasting about what type 
     of services that medical system could provide.
       Pressed, however, these practitioners would drop the 
     hyperbole and cut to the chase: The embargo was denying them 
     not only the medicines needed to administer to the sick, but 
     the tools and the educational materials needed to keep up 
     with their practices.
       In a major Havana hospital, the lead physician in one ward 
     took me into a room where ambulatory patients were being fed 
     their noon meal, a concoction that appeared to be something 
     near a rice and bean soup. All of the patients received the 
     amount of calories needed for their recovery, he noted even 
     if variety in their diet was lacking. Then he drove home 
     another point: Patients were fed even if the staff had to 
     forgo its minimum daily dietary requirements.
       At another major medical center, this time in the southern 
     port of Cienfuegos, the director admitted that he feared the 
     outbreak of any epidemic, because the combination of the 
     shortages of antibiotics and the limitations on nutrition 
     would make it impossible for his doctors to put up a fight.
       But that was November. Despite the Helms-Burton Act that 
     vows to punish foreign corporations for doing business in 
     Cuba, the re-election of President Clinton held the hope out 
     to Cubans that a warming might be near. Clinton himself had 
     fed this perception by his refusal to sanction the most 
     draconian of Helms-Burton provisions, a decision he 
     reaffirmed this summer.
       If the president is squeamish about implementing those 
     provisions, however, his administration has done little else 
     to indicate that it is interested in patching things up, 
     almost four decades since the U.S.-sponsored invasion to 
     topple Castro went disastrously awry at the Bay of Pigs.
       Meanwhile, Trimino reports, the situation has become 
     graver, especially in the Oriente, or eastern provinces 
     normally out of sight to tourists. In the provincial city of 
     Holguin, she told of recently visiting with a young girl just 
     out of the hospital who had been treated for severe 
     malnutrition; her daily intake consisted of a biscuit made 
     from sweet potatoes. She had been receiving a liter of yogert 
     , as a substitute for milk, every four days.
       This is something I cannot independently corroborate, 
     although I have no reason to doubt it. While I did not see 
     any starving people during my visit last November, I saw 
     enough too-thin people, especially in the countryside, and 
     emaciated livestock to convince me--the relative prosperity 
     in Havana and other cities notwithstanding--that Cuba could 
     be on the verge of a major health crisis. It might still be. 
     Or worse, it might be sliding into the middle of one, the 
     outcome of which could be too horrific to consider.
       The question Americans have to ask is simple. Is this what 
     we want? Does our hatred for Castro and his communist system 
     so blind us that we are willing to allow a humanitarian 
     tragedy of immense proportions to unfold 90 miles off our 
     shores, just in hopes it will overthrow him?
       Over his long reign, Fidel Castro has survived numerous 
     American attempts at removal, including those of 
     assassination and the threat (almost to the brink, in fact) 
     of nuclear war. Most experts who follow Cuba say only 
     Castro's naturally appointed date with the Grim Reaper will 
     allow Washington to say it has finally achieved its goal, and 
     all reports are that for a man in his early 70s, he is much 
     healthier (and better fed) than his average countryman.
       That is not the point, though, insists Carmen Trimino as 
     she makes her rounds of congressional offices, trying to 
     enlist more representatives to her heartfelt cause. (Not one 
     member of the Arizona delegation has been receptive.)
       ``It is my people who are facing starvation,'' she says 
     indignantly.
       Perhaps she will win the day. Embargoes are a favored tool 
     of U.S. diplomacy, often in collusion with the United 
     Nations, for use against recalcitrant regimes. Witness the 
     fact that sanctions are being applied not only to Cuba but 
     also in Iraq (where Saddam Hussein is allowed to sell oil to 
     purchase foods and medicines), Libya and Myanmar (Burma). 
     Limited sanctions still are applied to what is left of 
     Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).
       But sanctions are rarely effective. Notice that the 
     strongmen running the governments of the aforementioned 
     countries are all still in power, even if their people are at 
     the point of emotional and physical breakdown. Nor are 
     sanctions even relevant; America's official fascination in 
     maintaining a dialogue with the butchers of Tiananmen Square, 
     who defiantly continue to keep more than 1 billion Chinese 
     under Communist oppression, has made a mockery of U.S. 
     efforts to use economic measures as a whip against lesser 
     regimes.
       Carmen Trimino only wishes that more members of Congress 
     would see in their hearts the futility of denying foods and 
     medicines,; the bill she wants the House to consider takes no 
     stand on other parts of the economic embargo. (Perhaps it 
     should; Castro might last, but the communist system would 
     likely collapse upon the rush of American goods). She will 
     keep trying. Her Cuban-American heart is in it.

     

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