One Man's Obsession: The Smugglers Who Risk All to Free Castro's Slaves

For more than a year Babalú's Henry Gómez has been trying to convince every member of the MSM who will listen (not many) to do a story on the intrepid men who rescue Castro's captives from his clutches, otherwise known and persecuted as "smugglers," in the old Southern tradition of labelling rescuers of men as "yellow dogs," "scaliwags" and "rascallions," among the nicer names given them by slaveholders whose victims they "stole" to freedom.

Henry, of course, doesn't want the MSM to champion their cause much less recognize their merits (small chance of that). He wants the media, always hostile to Cuban refugees and those who champion their cause, to do (or invent) a story about how these men are really in Castro's service, if not agents of Castro.

There is just one glitch: no evidence exists to back up Henry's allegations except in his fertile imagination where anyone who rescues a Cuban is a villain and abetter of Castro and all Cuban newcomers should be returned to the island to add their body temperature to Henry's cherished pressure cooker where saints and sinners will be sacrificed for the greater glory of, well, Henry and those like Henry who believe that the Cuban people, not Castro, are the only obstacle to Cuba's freedom.

As Alfonso's Chardy's story in The Miami Herald points out, there are dozens of smugglers of Cubans in U.S. jails. If what Henry presumes were true, they needn't be. All they would have to do is state that Castro has some part in their activities and their sentences would be commuted in exchange for their testimony. But none has "confessed" to this because it is not true. They prefer to remain in prison for the "crime" of rescuing men from slavery than to go free for the sin (but no crime under U.S. law) of being complicit in their enslavement. Still, Henry is not convinced: maybe the smugglers really want to be in jail, or are too loyal to Castro to betray him, preferring instead to betray their families and destroy their own lives in order to continue serving him. Yes, Henry will believe anything because in fact he believes in nothing. If all men were like Henry, all men would think and act like Henry. Thankfully, most men aren't and don't.

These so-called smugglers are the moral giants of our generation, conductors on a new underground railroad that travels over the ocean, no less noble an enterprise than the first or one less fraught with dangers. Castro's Coast Guard even shoots at them and has killed at least one of them, and also imprisons them by the score. This, however, doesn't convince Henry that Castro and the smugglers are not in cahoots. On the contrary, he seems to believe that it bolsters his case. You see, according to Henry, if the Castro regime wants deniability it has to interdict and even kill a few of them. Of course, if the smugglers were in fact in business with Castro, shooting at them and killing them is not the best way to win their trust nor would it be especially good for business. You can hardly sell someone "protection" by shooting him dead. That would surely discourage the others. It should be clear, then, to anyone but a halfwit that the smugglers are Castro's quarry, not his allies. They should certainly be our heroes for challenging Castro on a daily basis, face to face and under his own nose.

As for Henry, he is a case study in self-hate and rabid assimilationism: the Cuban Tom Tancredo, who doesn't want to free Cubans, but to free the U.S. of Cuban "migrants." Though the son of refugees, Henry has a special disdain for all who flee Castro's prison today (including the 4-year old whose birth father wants to make a gift of her to Castro). No one believes more firmly that "Cubans belong in Cuba" than this self-described "American-Cuban." His stated support for Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson leave no question as to his xenophobia and nativism, which reminds us of another first-generation American — Tom Tancredo.

Henry's post at Babalú ends with a plea to Alfonso Chardy of The Miami Herald to investigate the smugglers for supposed Castro connections. Mr. Herald Watch seems to forget that Chardy was a co-writer of Oscar's Corral Martí Moonlighters story.


POSTSCRIPT:

According to information furnished by Pedro Argüellos Morán, one of the 75 independent Cuban journalists imprisoned by Castro in 2003, there are two alleged smugglers confined with him at the Canaleta Provincial Prison, in the so-called "province" of Ciego de Ávila. They are Jorge Luis Echemendía Solano, 42, sentenced to 12 years in 1999 for "human trafficking," and Edvín (Edwin?) Alfonso Ruíz, 31, sentenced to 3 years in 2006 for "entering the country illegally." Both men are residents of South Florida. The Ministry of the Interior has offered to release both on the condition that they request "repatriation" (that is, agree to remain in Cuba permanently). Both have opted to complete their full sentences rather than pact with Castro. Since entering your own country or assisting others to leave it is not a crime anywhere in the world except Cuba, these men should be classified as political prisoners, or even as prisoners of conscience. Of course, they are not. International human rights organizations follow Castro's lead in such matters. One wonders how many more rescuers of men are jailed in Cuba's 300 other prisons that we know nothing about because there is no one to report on their incarceration. H/t Charlie Bravo.

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