Gloria Estafan marches with Posada Carriles and hosts Obama fundraiser
News from Cuba | Friday, 2 April 2010
Statement by the Centre for Democracy in the Americas
"According to news reports, President Barack Obama will travel to Miami, Florida later this month for a fundraiser at the home of Gloria Estefan, where couples will pay $34,500 in donations to the Democratic National Committee for the privilege of attending.
Ms. Estefan is a leader in the Cuban-American community and an outspoken advocate - as is her right - for hard-line policies against Cuba's government.
Recently, she helped lead a march in the Miami community - also her right - protesting human rights conditions in Cuba. But joining her parade was Luis Posada Carriles, the man responsible for the first act of mid-air terrorism in our hemisphere. This took place on October 6, 1976, when a bomb exploded on Cubana Flight 455, causing the plan to plunge into the ocean and killing all 73 crew and passengers aboard, many of them Cuban teenagers. Posada Carriles continues to walk free, and the U.S. continues to list Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.
And now that Luis Posada Carriles has marched with Ms. Estefan, Ms. Estefan is holding a fundraiser for the President.
Public Campaign reported last year that supporters of sanctions against Cuba have donated nearly $11 million to Members of Congress since 2004 in what the Miami Herald called "a largely successful effort" to prevent changes in the policy.
Now, thanks to Ms. Estefan, a sizeable chunk of campaign funds will land in the hands of the DNC and could help defray the costs of the President's political activities and 2012 presidential campaign.
Normal people - and high-level donors - think that politicians are influenced by such massive contributions. One of them is President Obama.
The President has often said that he is committed to prying the hands of the special interests off the levers of government. At $34,500 per couple, the people lining up to attend the Gloria Estefan fundraiser better hope that he's kidding. The rest of us hope that he is isn't.
U.S. policy toward Cuba - flawed and failed as it is today - should reflect both the national interest of the country and the views of all Americans, not just the fortunate few who can pay the freight and get close, private access to the most important official who decides what the policy ought to be.
That, dear readers, would be change we could believe in."
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Gloria Estefan: "Voluntary CIA agent?"
By M. H. Lagarde
According to People magazine, if fate had not put Gloria Estefan in the music world, probably the Cuban singer would have become a spy. She was then still very young and by her ability with languages, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) United States proposed that she go to work for it.
"They realized that I was someone who could pass as a regular person without raising any eyebrow. So the CIA approached me and wanted me to train in their Atlanta headquarters," said the 52 year-old song interpreter to the Telemundo TV program Al red vivo with Maria Celeste Arraras. She explained that the offer came while working as an interpreter of Spanish, English and French Customs at Miami International Airport. The Cuban said her mother influenced her decision saying she should not consider the proposal, having already suffered a lot from her father's political activities. However, besides the knowledge of several languages, the history of her father may have been one of the reasons that the CIA proposed that she join their ranks.
Her father, Jose Fajardo, had been a bodyguard for the dictator Fulgencio Batista and was imprisoned in Cuba after being captured during the mercenary invasion of Bay at the Pigs in 1961. Fajardo, then fled to Florida, where he was granted citizenship and later joined the U.S. Army to fight in Vietnam.
However, the famous singer of the eighties, admits it had been an attractive offer. "Maybe I made the decision[too], he said, What better cover to go as a singer, talking to the chairs, talking to the Kings, close to all the people who wanted access? So, who knows?
The truth is that agent or not, at least in regard to its retrograde position on Cuba, such a father-of ...- both the singer and her husband, music impresario Emilio Estefan, have done a great service to the Agency.
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"Friends forever"
Luis Posada Carriles and Ladies in White go out
By José Pertierra
Translation: Machetera
Only in Miami. Despite the seventy-three outstanding first-degree murder charges against him related to the mid-air explosion of a Cubana Airlines passenger jet, Luis Posada Carriles has not been extradited to Venezuela nor has he been indicted in the United States for these crimes.
He wanders unleashed and un-vaccinated along Calle Ocho in Miami, marching alongside Gloria Estefanin support of the so-called Ladies in White.
His support of the 'ladies' ought not to surprise us. There is an important link between Posada and these 'ladies'. The link is called Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magriña. It's a well established fact, admitted even by the 'ladies' themselves that their organization receives $1,500 a month from Rescate Jurídico [Legal Rescue] in Miami.
Posada and the 'ladies' share the same godfather.
The president of Rescate Jurídico is no more and no less than Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magriña. An extremely close friend and Luis Posada Carriles, financial sponsor, Alvarez was the person who brought Posada to the United States on his boat, the Santrina, according to documents
from the U.S. District Attorney's office. A few weeks later, he organized the famous and shameful press conference for Posada Carriles who had up until that point been 'hidden' in Miami. Alvarez is also the same person who got one of his people to place two bombs in the Tropicana nightclub in Havana. This conversation was recorded and exposed on Cuban television.
It's evident that the terrorist history of this sinister person did not stop the 'ladies' from involving themselves in this game and receiving money salted with Cuban blood. In the United States, receiving money from a terrorist organization is a felony that carries a harsh punishment. I suppose the same is true in Cuba.
Nevertheless, until now, the only sanction that these 'ladies' have received is repudiation from Cubans in the street. The Cuban government has shown itself to be extremely tolerant, even providing police protection.
Here's a suggestion for Posada Carriles. If he really wants to march in support of Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magriña?s 'ladies,' he ought to go to Havana to do it. As Calle 13 would say, 'I dare you!'
Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the author and translator are cited.
