The greatest heroes of the Holocaust, responsible for saving the majority of Jews who were saved, were smugglers. The blacks slaves that were rescued from bondage before Emancipation were delivered to freedom by smugglers. There is nothing dishonorable in being a smuggler if you risk your life and well-being, your freedom and your good name, to save another man and give him a future; and when the man whose life you save (at the risk of your own) is a stranger, then you have shared in the work of God. The saints and the martyrs did no more than this. Christ Himself did no more than this.
The heirs of the abolitionists and the righteous gentiles live among us today and are reviled as they were; persecuted as they were; imprisoned as they were; subjected to calumny and obloquy as they were, and just as right as they were. Some day, they, too, will be honored by the very men who lack the moral compass to follow their example.
The men who risk their lives every day to deliver from bondage our brothers in Cuba are as worthy of our respect and admiration as those who 150 years ago redeemed black men from slavery or saved the Jews from Hitler's gas ovens. Only if you believe that Cubans are less worthy of freedom, humans of a lesser stamp than God's image, can you argue that their rescuers are mercenaries or debased men. Only if you believe that a death which lasts 48 years is preferable to one that comes unexpectedly and quickly, only if you believe that a human life should be wasted, its potential untapped and misery alone be its sole compensation, can you condemn those who would redeem such lives at the peril of their own. Only if you are yourself completely debauched and indifferent completely to the cries of oppressed humanity, and are content to insist that they be patient with tyranny when you yourself or yours were not, can you dismiss the claims or demean the work of those who are their redeemers. You, too, would have welcomed them as your deliverers if you found yourself in their situation now.
Calumny is the only response which lesser men have in the presence of sacrifice, and the greater the sacrifice the greater the calumny. Those who impugn the work of these rescuers of men attribute to them their own base motives and make them the scapegoats of their own materialism because it is only in this light that they can understand them. Their critics demonize in them what they call success in themselves. Their success is selfish and self-centered, extending, at most, within the circle of their own families. Money is not the motivation of those who risk all, including their own freedom, for the freedom of others. If money were what motivated them, there are a thousand other lines of work, legal and illegal, that yield greater profits with fewer risks; and a thousands of things that they could smuggle less conspicuous and fraught with danger than refugees.
Moreover, it well to remember that money also greased the wheels of the Underground Railroad which brought thousands of slaves to freedom in the North and Canada before the Civil War. It was Northern philanthropists that financed this undertaking and even free slaves contributed with their mite to the rescue of their own families. The abolitionists never had a problem paying to smuggle slaves from the South to the North, or even ransoming blacks from their own slavemasters, that is, in effect buying slaves in order to set them free. Both Frederick Douglass and Dred Scott were thus saved.
No Jew escaped the Holocaust in the 1930s without bribing the Nazis; sometimes they themselves paid for their freedom; sometimes their relatives abroad paid; and sometimes international relief groups paid, but everybody had to pay. Hitler's Final Solution was not his first solution. He wanted to sell the Jews to the Western democracies, but they weren't buying. If the nations of Europe had been willing to ransom the Jews as they were given the opportunity to do, most of European Jewry would have been spared, but they too expected the situation in Germany to be "normalized" at some time and didn't believe it would take a world war to do it.
Yes, money, which can be put to so many vile purposes, can also be the instrument of a people's deliverance. Why shouldn't Cuban exiles employ their money to save their relatives and friends? Why should the Communists be able to use their resources to entrap our people but we not be allowed to use our resources to free them?
A traitor to our cause revealed recently that he is currently trying to find a MSM reporter willing to "expose" the Cuban "smugglers'" ties to Castro, which he assumes must exist even in the absence of any corroborating evidence and in the face of much evidence that proves the opposite. Of course, these so-called smugglers, if they were really in cahoots with Castro and shared their profits with him, would not be persecuted as vigoroously by the Cuban Coast Guard as they are by their U.S. counterpart; but they are. And if these so-called "smugglers" were Castro's agents, they would have said so in exchange for clemency when they were convicted in U.S. courts for the "crime" of bringing Cubans to freedom. But although the FBI has attempted to entice them in every way, offering to dismiss charges against them and even give them new identities and safe houses where they could live at government expense, they have resolutely refused to say something that is not true even to save their lives. They respect themselves and what they have done and have no regrets. A Castroite is not cast in this mold. Opportunism is his base metal. These patriotic and humanitarian "smugglers" are not willing to save their skins at the price of dishonor, and this says all that needs be said about them.
At a time when the refugees themselves are vilified, preyed upon and sometimes even killed in this country's territorial waters by those charged with enforcing the president's orders, can we expect their rescuers, who willingly share their fate, not to be vilified also by those who disdain the refugees?
There has not been a single instance where one smuggler has been tied to the castro government by any American court.
ReplyDeleteI've been saying that they are the underground railroad of the Straits of Death for a while.
At the same time, I understand that they have various motivations, one is to free Cubans, another one is adventure, and another one is money. Let's see, the fact that they go to Cuba and they risk it all to free Cubans is enough to elevate those men to the ranks of secret fighters.
The love for adventure, nothing wrong with that, while used to oppose tyranny: they risk what people who also own boats don't risk: their lives when they go to Cuba and pick Cubans from a beach. Money, yes, money: All patriotic enterprises have been at least in part fueled by money, if we have to pay them to get Cubans out of there in a safer way, so be it.
Oh, let's say that people don't like smugglers...
Well, there's the dry foot wet foot which gurantees the existence of smugglers. Because is the American Coast Guard was nearer Cuba saving men, women, and children from the waters, and the US government were not in cahoots with the tyranny to send them back or to put them indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay, there would not be a reason for these smugglers to exist.
How is that the communists can have all the resources of the word to keep the slaves enslaved and we cannot even buy their freedom, not from the commies, mind you, but from men who are adventurers -and anticastro adventureres- to spirit them to freedom?
In the meantime, rich American men are bribing the biCoastal Guard to have their luxury yatchs moored at the Marina Hemingway. This happened years ago when I lived in Cuba, and it still happens today. One can see huge yatchs, some with helicopter decks, and most of them roll off luxury cars on arrival. And tell me that these people don't pay to stay in Cuba. But no, the smugglers are the spawn of kasstro, according to some. I have a word for the traitors: Rome despised the traitors it used, usually executing them once the dirty work was done.
We have said many times that people who own yatchs or more modest seafaring vessels should go to Cuba en masse and pick up their relatives, defying the laws of Cuba. The US government would have to explain to the world why they are trying to block them from liberating their relatives, and from liberating Cuba, because we all know that Cuba's tyranny would come crumbling down if that were to happen. It almost happened in 1980 with the Mariel, and I can tell you, because I lived there at the time, that the government ONLY regained momentum after Jimmy Carter reassured that NOT ALL would be admitted and blocked the Cuban-American yatchs from going to Cuba to keep picking up people.
One of the non publicized stories of the Mariel was how the Cuban Coast Guard was overwhelmed by private boats picking up Cubans wherever, other than Havana or the Mariel Port. The help came from the US, when the American Coast Guard interdicted all boats making the trip down to Cuba. Then, and only then, Kasstro gained the needed momentum to recover grounds and to save his tyranny.
By the way, the Mariel was the direct result of the trips to Cuba from the exiles. People had the image of a land that saved their connationals, and gave them the chance to live in freedom parading amongst themselves. It changed Cuba, forever. Dissedents start sprouting like wild flowers everywhere.
One of the solutions that we have proposed at KillCastro is to overwhelm the tyranny flooding Cuba with Cubans and Americans arriving at the same time at all ports of call and at all airports. A civilian invasion which will cause the government of Cuba to collapse, because they would not be able to control the unknown numbers of Americans and Cuban Americans mingling with the local and the police would not dare to touch a hair of anybody because the fear of a confrontation with the United States.
Manuel:
ReplyDeleteI am very impressed with your observation of smugglers, it is so true! if it wasn't for them, who would have helped the slaves? who would have helped the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, money yes, but money is always a need when trying to free someone from tyranny, the men and women who smuggle Cubans into freedom are heroes in my book, if it wasn't for them, a lot would not have made it to these shores, they would have been sent back, or worse drowned or eaten by sharks, God bless them all!
Charlie:
ReplyDeleteAs you say the Wet Foot Dry Foot, has given way to smugglers, just like prohibition engendered gangsters, it's the law of the land that facilitates these things to happen, if there were no WFDF, then we might not have smugglers.
A civilian invasion is a great idea, if the USA wasn't hindering us, visiting Cuba every three years is not gonna do it, why do you think Bush came up with that great idea! am sure it was with the help of our great Exilio Historico, and the politicos, who are as stubborn as castro with their intolerance.