Sentenced for Acts Against the Counter-Revolution

Miami Herald, Posted on Mon, Jan. 09, 2006, BY JAY WEAVER AND NOAH BIERMAN, - A Florida International University professor and his wife, both accused of being foreign agents for Cuba's communist government, were denied bond today. Federal Magistrate Andrea Simonton said Carlos M. Alvarez, 61, and his wife, Elsa, 55, posed a flight risk if allowed to return to their South Miami home. ''I believe they would go back to Cuba,'' Simonton said. The couple were arrested Friday by federal agents and appeared in Miami federal court Monday. They are accused of serving as foreign agents for Cuba without registering with the U.S. government, as is required by law. Carlos Alvarez is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies. Elsa Alvarez is an administrator at FIU.”

I am acquainted with Mr. Alvarez, having worked at FIU and having several relatives and friends who have served as administrators there. This whole affairs stinks to the heavens of rotten banana peels! It seems the Junta has once again convened to issue charges against enemies of the (banana) Republic.

Note that we are still releasing people into the streets that killed and plan to kill innocent people. Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles took down a plane with the junior national girls and boys fencing team of Cuba along with a bunch of other innocents from Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad. Other terrorists now loose upon our streets killed and maimed Cuban civilians, European vacationers, Latin American politicians and civilians, student activists, etc., etc. A large number of the victims of these terrorists have been American citizens of Cuban heritage.

In pursuit of dubious foreign policy goals our government supported and trained some of the worst terrorists and mass murderers for years. As these bloody henchmen were reshuffled Miami served as a haven for these torturers and mass murderers. I would like to say that this is a thing of the past and I believe there is much evidence to support this. Obviously there are a handful of hopeful future terrorists who have not gotten the message.

I don’t believe Carlos and Elsa Alvarez did anything besides submit articles for Cuban papers and give speeches about their views and news about the actions and behavior of some of the worse sort of radicals that live in our community. It would be difficult to see them as some deep cover infiltrators of these sorts of networks since their views were pretty well known.

Like many Cuban Americans in Miami, the professor would speak his mind outside of the sovereign state of Miami but would be more taciturn on volatile issues regarding Latin America in unknown or hostile company. We all know that in Miami the wrong views can cost you at the very least your job. (I should point out here that Mr. Andres Pastrana may come off not so well but he is a pretty good guy. He placed a number of people under a South Florida Workforce contract I oversaw.)

It is not illegal to write for Cuban papers and their travel to Cuba has been as academicians. (Even if it wasn’t how many thousands of Cuban Americans visit and even reside part time in Cuba, traveling through third counties?) These people are obviously being targeted here in Miami because of their (legal) views and activities, which rather than being clandestine, were too well known.

I am here in New York where I cannot turn on a cable broadcast without hearing a Guevara or Chavez speech or hear someone lauding the Cuban Revolution full throttle. In college it seemed every other professor was sponsoring his or her humpteenth trip to Cuba. While visiting myself I encounter fellow Cuban Americans who are apolitical and others who are supportive of the Revolution, and I see teams of foreigners from immigrants to students to visitors from other lands. I have come to terms that people differ, even if I find their views unfathomable.

I neither look at Castro as the Devil himself anymore than I look at pre-Revolutionary Cuba as anything less than a repressive, poverty stricken police state run by a U.S. stooge. Latin America has many sorts of dysfunction, some of which were caused by our own failings, (including our colonial, genocidal and slavery tainted history) and other failings induced by U.S. imperialism and neocolonialism. I strongly believe that Cuba and much of Latin America is deeply troubled and I have my own ideas about solutions but none of them involve Miami terrorists and those who long for the good old days of pre-Revolutionary misery, racism, classism and subjugation.

From our interesting, albeit few conversations on the topic I believe that Mr. Alvarez also believes that there are many failings in Cuba which must be remedied, by the people of Cuba. I also gleaned from his words that he believed that the Cuban people deserve to be free of threats of foreign invasion and terrorism. Such a reasonable position, even if it is in error, is not cause to jail a person.

PS I HATE writing about these things as it will give ammunition to all of the Cuban hating assholes. Note, it is a Cuban who in my opinon is being victimized; and remember there are extremists of all backgrounds.