I have known Ramon Saul Sanchez since the year 2000. The first time I saw him was at the house where Elian Gonzalez was living in Miami, the home of his uncles, before the raid. The first words I said to him, just after the Janet Reno Brigade kidnapped Elian, were "¿Cómo está esa oreja?" (His ear was still wrapped in white bandages, having been redecorated by Reno’s Gestapo.)
At the time, I already had been married for 18 years to my Cuban wife, from El Cerro, and had learned a lot about Cuba and Castro. I had never really become involved, however, in the cause for freedom, except for attending a couple of protests. I had not yet become aware that my participation in the cause was necessary, as is yours.
My wife was worried that "they" would come and take Elian back to Cuba, but I repeatedly told her not to worry, that the United States was a nation of laws, in which no one would simply take Elian away without due process of law. I was wrong.
On the morning that my wife awoke me to say that Elian had been taken, I was shaken and dismayed, which never happens to me. I could not believe that the democrat bastards had done it. Something similar has happened to me, now that the republican bastards have "repatriated" the 15 rafters picked up on the old Seven-Mile Bridge. Again I am mad as Hell.
Some Cubans have said I am aplatanado, although about now I feel more apolimado than anything. Let me make this clear: I am certainly in favor of freedom for Cuba, for the eradication of the Castro regime, and for the return of Cuba to the prosperity it knew before the tyranny took over and ruined the economy, infrastructure, environment, and culture that flourished there until 1959. However, I am interested, not as a transplanted gringo aplatanado, but as a gringo interested in the welfare of Cuba, America, and every nation stained by the influence of the abominable beast from Hell, son of the devil, enemy of all men, the Tyrant Fidel Castro Ruz Rockefeller.
Aplatanado? No problem. But I am an international agitator, firmly opposed to the tyrant and all his little slaves, as well as to every other tyranny on Earth.
As such, I am a member of a relatively small corps of dedicated enemies of tyranny, one of the few who understand (more or less) that the tyrants who today rule over two billion people would like to rule over six and a half billion people. Though the members of this corps number in the thousands, those who make time to speak out against tyranny number only a few. Too many underestimate the value of their public testimony against the crimes and atrocities of the Castro regime and those who support it.
Ramon Saul Sanchez believes in pacific civil disobedience, which has characterized his struggle against tyranny for about 20 years. For a few years I attended meetings of the Democracy Movement and participated in its activities. Then I had a nervous breakdown that I interpreted as an encounter with Christ (or it might have been both at the same time), and then had a change of philosophy. I came to believe that Castro will not negotiate or alter his methods, that Castro will not be moved by the methods Ghandi used to move British Empire, and that he means what he says when he says "Socialismo o Muerte."
So I stopped participating in the activities of Democracy Movement. But I never ceased to hope that Ramon Saul and his friends and supporters might achieve their goal of freedom for Cuba.
Today I worry about Ramon Saul’s health, now that he is ten days into the hunger strike. He is not an old man, but he is not a spring chicken either. At 50, with health issues, he is putting his life in jeopardy for relatively small potential gain. His continued existence in this life would result in more useful service to the cause than the objective he currently seeks, that a commission of the Cuban Exile Community be received and heard by officials of the Bush administration on the wet foot-dry foot policy.
I told him last week that this issue is not worth his dying. I also said that, if he must die over it, I would rather see him die on the steps of the White House, where it might somehow have a greater impact.
I think Ramon Saul is a brave man and a patriot. I also think he has made a bad choice in choosing to die rather than to be heard by the Bush administration on this issue. I hope he, or the commission, will receive the hearing he has requested, and soon. But if that does not take place, I hope Ramon Saul will end the strike and realize that in living he might achieve more than in dying, at least for now. If nothing else comes of this, it would be good to see an awakening and a dedication by many, whose participation is needed in this cause.
We - you and I - are the only ones who might cause a shift in the balance that so far has kept Cuba in chains and Castro in power. If every one of us participated in just one type of activity to publicize the plight of Cuba or assist in the cause of freedom, perhaps the earth would shake, as it should.
If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, with respect to the current state of the nation, he would say: "This is not what we envisaged, and not what we struggled to create. The War of Independence has not yet been won."
"A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law."
-- Justice John Marshall
(1755-1835) US Supreme Court Chief Justice
