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Wet Foot/Dry Foot Reaches New Low
Photo by Roberto Koltun of El Nuevo Herald
Alfredo at El Cafe Cubano and Ziva at Blog for Cuba have posted on the latest saga involving Cuban rafters seeking freedom. This one involves a group of 15 Cubans, including 2 infants, who arrived at the old Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys on a makeshift boat this past Wednesday and hung on to a concrete support pillar underneath the bridge as their craft sank. The Coast Guard eventually arrived, but what happened next was unexpected. The rafters, thinking they had reached U.S. soil by touching the bridge's support structure, were taken to a USCG cutter instead of to dry land.
In other words, they are being treated like if they didn't touch land, similar to what occurred recently with another group which got stranded on a reef just outside the Keys.
Their status remains up in the air.
searching for news stories on this hasn't been easy. The local TV media gave yesterday's protest on the causeway next to the Miami Coast Guard station about 30-45 seconds of air time. The Miami Herald and Sun-Sentinel have nothing on-line.
Fortunately, El Nuevo Herald comes to the rescue with an article about the protest.
I apologize to my non-Spanish readers for not translating the article as I have a full day ahead of me, but here are some of the main points:
- About 30 or so people gathered at the bridge for the protest, organized by the Democracy Movement. Its leader, Ramon Saul Sanchez, has declared himself in a hunger strike until the rafters admitted into the U.S.
His most poignant quote was, "We are starting the new year as if Cubans were a piece of crap".
- This was the group's third attempt to leave the island prison in less than a year and a half.
- One of the rafters said that a Good Samaritan who spotted them handed the group a cellphone, through which the group made at least two calls. Relatives of the group has pictures of empty water bottles and clothing articles left by the rafters on the bridge itself, lending further support to their claim that they indeed reached "dry land".
- Relatives are studying the possibility of seeking legal action as early as this coming week, providing the rafters aren't returned to Cuba.
When will this absurdity end?
President Bush, are you listening?
posted by Robert at 10:19 AM
3 Comments:
What I have never been able to understand, Robert, is that despite this type of thing happening again and again, the Miami Cuban community continues its strong support of Bush and the Republican Party. Are its memories of Reagan and the Elian debacle that strong to effectively forget this type of event, time after time, when it comes time to cast votes?
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Rick,
You bring up a very interesting topic. There are several reasons why I think Cuban-Americans are traditionally Republican. I should say that we are far from monolithic in this regard. Quite a few of our prominent local Cuban-American politicians are Democrats (Alex Penelas, Raul Martinez for example).
One big reason is our past. We either escaped a Communist, authoritarian regime or are products of those who were victims of the revolution. The scars still run very deep in the community, even though it's been 47 years. Virtually all of us either have relatives or know of someone who's related to a victim of castro's prisons, firing squads, or had property and possessions taken away. Because of this, there is a natural tendency to shun any ideaology that is left-of-center.
John Kennedy's actions in the early 1960s (or lack thereof) cemented the traditional Cuban-American sentiment toward Republicans who at the time strongly supported the exiles' efforts to take Cuba back from castro.
Yes, Reagan's legacy lives on in the Cuban-American community. Unfortunately, so does Bill Clinton's legacy of wet foot/dry foot, attempted normalization of relations with Cuba, and of course Elian. This has also helped to reinforce the pro-Republicanism amongst second and third-generations even if at a more modest rate.
Having said all this, you might be surprised to know that a lot of traditionally Republican C-A's are quite unhappy with George W. Bush's for failing to repeal the wet foot/dry foot policy. They are also getting tired of hearing the same "Cuba Si, castro No" rhetoric from every president since Reagan.
The one reason that I think gets underestimated is Cuban-American's natural tendency and desire to be self-supportive, entrepenuerial and conservative-valued. This sets us apart from a lot of immigrants and is a natural draw toward the Republican, conservative side of things. By the way, I think this aspect has little to do with social status, as I know just as many working class C-A's as wealthy C-A's who are staunch Republicans.
I'm sure someone else can do a much better job of explaining this, but hopefully this at least gives you a better idea.
Thanks for the background, Robert. It does help me make a little better sense of this very confusing behavior.
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