During the Mariel boatlift in 1980, 125,000 Cubans crossed the Florida Straits. In 1994, amid severe economic crisis, Castro allowed another 30,000 or so rafters to leave the island. Hays said calls for inviting an intense crisis are limited. ''There are very, very few who are advocating a military solution to this situation,'' he said. Any action that might provoke a new boatlift could be a high-stakes gamble -- for both the Castro regime and the Bush administration.
Any exodus of rafters from Cuba could trigger a similar exodus from Haiti, leading to political and economic havoc in the state. Florida, a critical state in the 2000 presidential election, is even more critical in 2004. It has gained two votes -- to 27 -- in the Electoral College system that determines the presidency. ''[Castro would] be quite foolhardy to mess with a resolute George W. Bush,'' said Ana Navarro, an advisor to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. ``The administration has taken care of one tyrant already. I don't think they would vacillate about taking care of another one.''***
Tougher yet for Castro was the ''desertion'' of Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan essayist with lighter literary weight who enjoyed a close relationship with the Cuban dictatorship. He was almost a member of the family, someone whose unconditional support was taken for granted.
After 18,000 executed people, 120,000 political prisoners and 44 years of persecuting homosexuals, Jehova's Witnesses, readers of Mario Vargas Llosa and fans of the Beatles, among others, how could Castro anticipate that the deaths of three luckless negritos -- ''black boys,'' as he calls them -- and the imprisonment of merely 75 opposition members would provoke an uprising among his pampered writers and artists?
The problem is grave. Communist dictatorships always require an international choir of support. The choristers have two key functions:
o To lend their prestige to legitimize a political model lacking in freedoms and economic prosperity.
o To silence the victims' voices, conceal the truth and maintain an image of cheer.
How could Castro be an implacable tyrant when Gabriel García Márquez, that talented and charming writer, is his friend? How could it be true that border guards machine gun rafters and jailers kill political prisoners -- as happened to my friend Alfredo Carrión -- when Mario Benedetti, that sensitive Uruguayan poet, supports the revolution?
This corps of docile sycophants is so important that Castro created a powerful branch of the Interior Ministry to empower it: the Cuban Institute for Friendship with Peoples. A political police that uses maracas instead of pistols, its task is painstakingly laid out in the laborious ''Plans for Political Influence'' that are drafted every year and revised every semester. It consists of seducing famous people -- bribing, flattering and training them -- so that they will parrot the speech about a united, generous and anti-imperialistic revolution besieged by the perfidious Yankees and the wicked ``Miami Mafia.''
SHAMELESS SHOW
Why do so many valuable and intelligent people lend themselves to this shameless show? Several reasons and emotions are involved. Of course, ideological coincidence counts for something, but probably less than vanity and economic interests. The dictatorship uses money and fame as rewards. It publishes books and records. There are prizes, media coverage, praise.
To break with the Cuban revolution is to break with all that. Ask Colombian writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, to whom Castroites in his country mailed a letter-bomb.
Today, a lot of people are willing to pay that price. Castro and the revolution have lost their charm. Both are very old. Both have caused much harm. They have killed and imprisoned people excessively. They have created too much misery, too many exiles, too many informers. Too many bodies float on the Straits of Florida.
The pretext of Yankee imperialism no longer suffices to imprison the country's leading poet, Raúl Rivero, 25 independent journalists, 14 librarians and 30 other democrats, just because they spoke their truths. Much less to kill three young men who -- without hurting anyone -- tried to hijack a ferryboat to escape from that hell.
A VILE MANIFESTO
Castro and his propagandists have tried to contain the scattering. How? With a vile manifesto signed first by Alicia Alonso and followed by the tremulous signatures of 26 Cuban writers and artists who could be listed by Guinness as the people who have spent the longest time on their knees and heads bowed: Miguel Barnet, Roberto Fernán
dez Retamar, Cintio Vitier, Silvio Rodríguez and a shameful et cetera. What do they say? What have they been forced to say? Don't abandon us because the United States will invade us. Poor folks. Castro has already shot them at dawn, but they don't realize it.
[End] www.firmaspress.com