[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 100 (Thursday, July 21, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1571-E1572]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




SUSPEND RESTRICTIONS TO CUBA TO ALLOW FAMILY ASSISTANCE IN AFTERMATH OF 
                            HURRICANE DENNIS

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 21, 2005

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support a resolution to 
temporarily suspend restrictions on remittances, gift parcels, and 
family travel to Cuba in order to allow Cuban-Americans to assist their 
relatives in the aftermath of Hurricane Dennis.
  I have long opposed the embargo against Cuba, as I strongly believe 
that restricting travel and trade is a failed policy that harms the 
people of Cuba, and works against the promotion of democracy on the 
island. This is clearly evidenced in the wake of Hurricane Dennis when 
due to political sanctions Cuban Americans are powerless to reach out 
and assist their loved ones in a time of need.
  Hurricane Dennis was a disastrous force that killed 16 people, 
destroyed numerous buildings and homes and left Cuba with $1.4 billion 
in property damage. The embarrassingly small $50,000 in aid offered by 
the U.S. is not nearly enough to address the needs of the millions of 
Cubans who have been left without food, clean water, electricity, and 
shelter caused by the devastation of Hurricane Dennis.
  It is unfortunate that the U.S. government is unwilling to make a 
substantial contribution to the humanitarian mission in Cuba, but to 
deny Cuban Americans the right to help their families in a time of 
overwhelming need is an outrage. It is a policy that is both unethical 
and un-American.
  The Cuban people are the ones who are suffering and it is time to put 
politics aside and ease restrictions to allow Cuban-Americans to help 
their families and assist in disaster relief. This disaster is a prime 
example of why U.S. policy towards Cuba must be reevaluated. As it 
stands there is no exception in the law for emergency situations on the 
island and is therefore inhumane and serves as punishment to the people 
who are most vulnerable: Cuban citizens.
  The recent case of Sgt. Carlos Lazo and his inability to visit his 
sons in Cuba is another example of why rigid U.S. policy towards Cuba 
must be reevaluated. Sgt. Lazo deserves the opportunity to visit his 
sons in Cuba. His story has become well known to many in Congress 
through his activism in trying to change Cuba policy. He has served in 
war for his adopted Nation, and the fact that he is denied the ability 
to see his sons more often than once every three years is absurd and 
indefensible.

  For years Cuba policy has been driven by the Cuban-American community 
in Miami. It is clear, however, that the community no longer supports a 
hard-line approach. Many Cuban-Americans feel betrayed that their 
government dictates which family members they travel to see and how 
often they may do so. Cuban-Americans should have the right to visit 
their families, send them gifts, needed supplies, and money without the 
government restrictions now in place.
  Developing a relationship with Cuba is an important foreign policy 
goal and in order to achieve this goal a new and rational approach to 
relations between our countries is urgently needed, based on dialogue, 
open travel and increased trade.

                [From the New York Times, July 6, 2005]

              Florida's Zeal Against Castro Is Losing Heat

       Miami.--Fidel Castro is not dead, but he has haunted Miami 
     for nearly 50 years. This is a city where newscasters still 
     scrutinize Mr. Castro's health and workers conduct emergency 
     drills to prepare for the chaos expected upon his demise. Spy 
     shops still flourish here, and a store on Calle Ocho does 
     brisk business in reprints of the Havana phone book from 
     1959, the year he seized power. But if Mr. Castro's grip on 
     Cuban Miami remains strong, the fixation is expressed 
     differently these days. The monolithic stridency that once 
     defined the exile community has faded. There is less 
     consensus on how to fight Mr. Castro and even, as Cuban-
     Americans grow more politically and economically diverse, 
     less intensity of purpose. Some call it shrewd pragmatism, 
     others call it fatigue.
       In May, Luis Posada Carriles, a militant anti-Castro 
     fighter from the cold war era, was arrested here on charges 
     of entering the country illegally and was imprisoned in EI 
     Paso, where he awaits federal trial. Barely anyone in Miami 
     protested, even though many Cuban-Americans consider Mr. 
     Posada, 77, to be a hero who deserves asylum.
       A month earlier, two milestones--the 25th anniversary of 
     the Mariel boatlift, which brought 125,000 Cubans to the 
     United States and transformed Miami, and the fifth 
     anniversary of the seizure of Elian Gonzalez--passed almost 
     quietly.
       When a Miami Herald columnist went to Cuba in June and 
     filed dispatches critical of Mr. Posada, who is suspected in 
     a deadly airline bombing and other violent attacks, indignant 
     letters to the editor were the only protest. In the past, 
     Cuban-Americans boycotted The Herald and smeared feces on its 
     vending boxes to protest what they considered pro-Castro 
     coverage.
       This city where raucous demonstrations by exiles were once 
     as regular as summer storms has seen few lately. One theory 
     is that the people whose life's mission was to defeat Mr. 
     Castro and return to the island one day--those who fled here 
     in the early years of his taking power--have grown old and 
     weary.
       ``We are all exhausted from so much struggle'', said Ramon 
     Saul Sanchez, leader of the Democracy Movement, an exile 
     organization that once ran flotillas to the waters off Cuba 
     to protest human-rights abuses. Mr. Sanchez, 50, also 
     belonged to Alpha 66, an exile paramilitary group that 
     trained in the Everglades, mostly in the 1960's and 70's, for 
     an armed invasion of Cuba, and later protested around the 
     clock outside Elian Gonzalez's house. Now, he said, he 
     prefers less attention-grabbing tactics, quietly supporting 
     dissidents on the island from an office above a Laundromat.
       The subtler approach is gaining favor. Cuban-Americans have 
     grown more politically aware since the Elian Gonzalez 
     episode, many say, when their fervor to thwart the Clinton 
     administration and the boy's return to his father in Cuba 
     drew national contempt. Americans who had paid little 
     attention to the policy debate over Cuba tended to support 
     sending Elian home, polls showed, and were put off by images 
     of exiles blocking traffic and flying American flags upside 
     down in protest.
       ``Elian Gonzalez was a great lesson, a brutal lesson,'' 
     said Joe Garcia, the former executive director of the Cuban-
     American National Foundation, a once belligerent but now more 
     measured exile group. ``It woke us up.''
       Mayor Manny Diaz, a Cuban-American whose political career 
     took off after he served as a lawyer for Elian's Miami 
     relatives, said he decided afterward it was more important to 
     heal the wounds in Miami than to criticize the Castro 
     government. Mr. Diaz did not mention Cuba in his State of the 
     City speech this spring--an absence the local alternative 
     newspaper called ``downright revolutionary.'' In fact, Mr. 
     Diaz said he had never used Mr. Castro's name to rouse 
     support.
       ``I wish he'd get run over by an 18-wheeler tomorrow,'' Mr. 
     Diaz said of Mr. Castro. ``But as mayor, I'm supposed to fix 
     your streets and your parks and your potholes.''
       Also revolutionary is that Cuban-Americans, solidly 
     Republican since President John F. Kennedy's decision not to 
     support the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, are reconsidering 
     their allegiance. Most still stand by President Bush, which 
     helps explain their silence after the arrest of Mr. Posada. 
     Yet they also say Mr. Bush has repeatedly let them down.
       He has continued the ``wet foot, dry foot'' policy that 
     President Bill Clinton adopted, letting Cuban refugees who 
     make it to shore remain in this country but sending back 
     those stopped at sea. Mr. Bush also adopted new restrictions 
     last year on visiting and sending money to relatives in Cuba, 
     which all but the most hard-line exiles say hurts Cuban 
     families more than Mr. Castro.
       More recently, the Bush administration discussed 
     reassigning to Iraq a special military plane it bought to 
     help broadcast TV and Radio Marti in Cuba, a priority of 
     exile groups.
       ``The Cuban-American community helped elect this guy,'' Mr. 
     Garcia said, ``and even then Cuban-Americans get short 
     shrift.''
       Mr. Garcia made waves last fall by resigning from the 
     Cuban-American National Foundation to join a Democratic 
     advocacy group. Jose Basulto, the leader of Brothers to the 
     Rescue, a group that flew over the Florida Strait in the 
     1990s seeking rafters in distress, held a news conference in 
     2003 to announce that he was abandoning the Republican Party.

[[Page E1572]]

       But while Mr. Garcia, 41, has severed ties with the Bush 
     White House, Mr. Basulto, 64, has hope. His new goal is the 
     indictment of Mr. Castro's brother and chosen successor, Raul 
     Castro, for drug trafficking or for the 1996 shooting down of 
     two Brothers to the Rescue planes by Cuban fighters, in which 
     four men were killed.
       Mr. Basulto announced in May that he was offering $1 
     million for information that could lead to the indictment. So 
     far, he said, he has received no word from Washington.
       ``The United States is duty bound, duty bound to act in 
     bringing justice for these guys,'' Mr. Basulto said, speaking 
     of the downed pilots. Like other outspoken exiles, he 
     questions the administration's ousting of Saddam Hussein in 
     Iraq before Mr. Castro.
       ``We don't want to see a double standard,'' he said. ``We 
     don't want to see democracy in Iraq and not in Cuba. We are 
     owed that much.''
       His frustration was echoed by Miguel Saavedra, the leader 
     of Vigilia Mambisa, a hard-line exile group. Mr. Saavedra 
     said some exiles had been discouraging protests for fear of 
     antagonizing the White House--but not his faction.
       ``We're not calming down,'' he said. ``We're not tired. We 
     haven't surrendered.''
       But when Vigilia Mambisa tried to rally support for Mr. 
     Posada in May at the revered Cuban restaurant Versailles in 
     Little Havana, and at the Torch of Friendship, a downtown 
     monument, only a few dozen people showed up. Their shouts 
     could not pierce the buzz of traffic.
       The eclipse of the old exile passions is looming in a more 
     literal way down the street from the Torch of Friendship, at 
     the Freedom Tower, an elegant yellow beacon where more than 
     half a million Cuban refugees were processed in the early 
     years of the Castro government.
       The family of Jorge Mas Canosa, the founder of the Cuban 
     American National Foundation, once had plans to spend $40 
     million restoring the building as a museum of the exile 
     experience. The tower's new owner is Pedro Martin, a Cuban-
     American who remembers going there in the 1960s to pick up 
     food for his family.
       The museum is still in the works, but Mr. Martin's larger 
     plan is to erect a 62-story condominium building around it, 
     all but making the Freedom Tower vanish from the Miami 
     skyline.

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