Ramón Saúl Sánchez: el Gandhi del exilio cubano

Por Sonia Osorio ~ Agencia EFE

Con escasos recursos financieros, enarbolando el principio de la no violencia y utilizando los ayunos como herramienta para su activismo, Ramón Saúl Sánchez se ha convertido en el rostro más visible del exilio cubano en EEUU.

En su larga trayectoria, Sánchez, presidente del "Movimiento Democracia" ha realizado cuatro huelgas de hambre, varias campañas de desobediencia civil, flotillas frente a las costas cubanas y ha estado preso unas siete veces por su activismo.

Estrategias que le han permitido defender los derechos de algunos de sus compatriotas cuando el fantasma de la repatriación ronda sus travesías por el peligroso Estrecho de Florida.

El activista, nacido en Colón, Matanzas, se incorporó a la lucha anticastrista a los 15 años, después de que su madre lo enviara al destierro en los "Vuelos de la libertad" a través de los cuales unos 300.000 cubanos arribaron a EEUU entre 1965 y 1973.

"Tristemente mi patria vive la terrible soledad de la opresión, el desgarramiento de las familias y la violación de su soberanía. Desde que tuve uso de razón me di cuenta que no se puede vivir conociendo esa realidad cruzado de brazos", dijo.

Sánchez comenzó en un grupo paramilitar de Miami que en la década de los años 60 y 70 estaba a favor de derrocar al presidente cubano Fidel Castro con métodos violentos.

Tras pasar cuatro años y medio en una prisión federal por "negarme a testificar ante un gran jurado federal que investigaba un presunto atentado a Castro en Nueva York, en 1980", decidió que la violencia no era el camino adecuado.

"Concluí que cuando saliera de la cárcel convencería a los cubanos de luchar utilizando la no violencia", dijo quien se ha divorciado cinco veces por la pasión que le dedica a su activismo.

El cubano, que acumula sus días de vacaciones para los ayunos y otras actividades de su lucha, se inspira en Mahatma Gandhi, el icono mundial de la no violencia; en Martin Luther King, el líder negro de los derechos civiles; y en José Martí, prócer de la independencia de Cuba.

Al principio le costó convencer a una comunidad que tenía muchas heridas, pero luego algunos se incorporaron y actualmente la organización cuenta con una cuadrilla de aviones y una flotilla.

Su primer acto de desobediencia civil lo realizó en 1994 en contra de la política migratoria hacia Cuba, con monedas de 50 centavos e igual número de personas en una autopista de Miami.

"Nos colocamos simultáneamente en las casillas del peaje, lanzamos las monedas y apagamos los motores. Esto lo hicimos tres meses hasta que nos apresaron", recordó en su destartalada oficina, empapelada con fotos de presos políticos cubanos.

Sánchez fue uno de los artífices del boleto a la libertad de los cubanos conocidos internacionalmente como los "Camionautas" y los "Balseros del Puente".

Los "Camionautas" fueron interceptados por guardacostas en el 2003 cuando trataban de alcanzar las costas de Florida en un camión Chevrolet de 1951, adaptado como embarcación. El caso se resolvió enviando a tres de los cubanos, que habían tramitado sus visas de EEUU sin éxito, a la base de Guantánamo y luego los acogió un tercer país.

Una acción similar emprendió con los "Balseros del Puente", que llegaron a un antiguo puente de los Cayos de Florida en enero pasado y los repatriaron con el argumento de que la estructura no estaba conectada a tierra firme.

La decisión impedía a los "balseros" beneficiarse del decreto presidencial "pies secos, pies mojados", que permite quedarse en el país a los cubanos que tocan tierra y repatriar a los interceptados en el mar.
Sánchez elevó el caso ante un tribunal y realizó una huelga de hambre de 12 días exigiendo la revisión del decreto que considera "injusto e inhumano".

Se anotó otro triunfo: un juez dictaminó que se cometió un error al repatriarlo, se les otorgó visa a catorce de ellos y Washington accedió a una reunión sobre el decreto. "El elemento fundamental en todo esto no he sido yo, sino el pueblo tratando de que no se violen los derechos humanos y abriendo horizontes para la gente que viene buscando libertad en este país", manifestó con humildad. EFE

Miami Journal; New Policy on Cubans Met by Protest Drive

A Cuban exile leader was on the telephone with a police lieutenant, coordinating arrangements for the day's demonstration, while in another room the Miami City Manager, Cesar Odio, warned organizers that if any protesters continued spitting at police officers, the city's efforts at nonconfrontation might prove in vain.

For the last two weeks the Little Havana headquarters of Brigade 2506, an association of veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion 34 years ago, has served as a planning center for a campaign of protests that have lured workers from their jobs and, for a time last week, blocked traffic on expressways. The demonstrations result from President Clinton's decision to return to Cuba all refugees who flee it by sea, a step that essentially pulls in a welcome mat that was out for three decades.

Today the conservative exile groups sponsoring the protests staged their biggest one yet: thousands of people heeded a call to walk off their jobs at 2 P.M. -- many small Cuban-owned businesses shut down at that hour in support -- and filled 13 blocks of Southwest Eighth Street in Little Havana for a march and a rally.

The mood was festive -- soft drinks and T-shirts were sold, Cuban flags were waved, and shouts of "Libertad!" pierced the air -- but the cause remained heart-wrenching.

"If they are willing to die at sea, it must be something horrible that they go back to," Rosa Bauza, 40, who left Cuba nine years ago, said of the rafters no longer admitted to the United States.

If the exiles have counted on the patience of city officials and the police, who have made few arrests and even acquiesced to some of the traffic disruptions, they have yet to win the widespread solidarity they seek.

The Clinton Administration's new policy is attributed by the demonstrators to a nationwide wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, and that sentiment is found even in the Miami metropolitan area, where more than half a million Cubans live and Hispanic immigrants are the dominant group.

A poll published on Monday by The Miami Herald found that most people here in Dade County, including 45 percent of Cuban-American respondents, supported "sharply" limiting immigration from Cuba. And even as the protesters sang Cuba's national anthem on the streets here today, Gov. Lawton Chiles, a Democrat who supports the Administration's policy, was in Haiti to offer the state's assistance in preventing "another mass immigration crisis" brought on by seagoing refugees from that nation.

In Dade County and elsewhere in the state, petitions are being prepared to put on the November 1996 ballot several initiatives that would limit government benefits to illegal immigrants. California's Proposition 187 is a model for this effort.

"We have 15,000 homeless, hungry Americans in Dade County," said Enos Schera of Citizens of Dade United, one of the groups gathering signatures. "Why would we want to import more misery?"

But many Cubans here, opposed to any dealings with Fidel Castro and favoring means like a naval blockade to bring him down, say they are offended by the Washington-Havana negotiations that led to the Administration's policy change. They fear more agreements between the two countries, and perhaps a loosening of the trade embargo that Mr. Castro blames for his country's ills.

"The United States is looking to stabilize Castro to prevent a migration crisis if he falls abruptly," said Ramon Saul Sanchez, a principal organizer of the protests. "But that's postponing the inevitable."

Mr. Sanchez, 40, once belonged to the Cuban exile paramilitary group Alpha 66 and says he served time in prison after refusing to answer a Federal grand jury's questions about a plot to kill Mr. Castro during a United Nations visit by the Cuban leader 15 years ago.

He was also the strategist behind the traffic jams created last week by small groups of Cuban protesters, who blocked streets and highways with their vehicles and their bodies. After a public outcry, the coalition of conservative exile organizations spearheading the protests apologized. But demonstrations of a less disruptive nature have continued.

In defense of their campaign, the protesters have invoked the memory of Martin Luther King and the civil disobedience of the 1960's. But blacks here seem among the most incensed over the traffic snarls and the tolerance shown by the police. Some say they remember when the police responded in riot gear to a peaceful demonstration by Haitians five years ago, clubbing and arresting many of the participants.

"The problem is not that we're against our Cuban brothers and sisters protesting -- we understand oppression," said the Rev. Victor Curry, pastor of the New Birth Baptist Church. "All we're saying is, Be fair."

Mr. Sanchez said the protests had succeeded in sending a message to the White House. He acknowledged that as yet there had been no response to that message but said the demonstrations would now escalate to another level: plans for a march in Washington, on a date not yet determined, and for a flotilla that is expected to cross into Cuban territorial waters on July 13 to commemorate the sinking of a tugboat off Havana's coast last summer, during the mass exodus. Forty Cubans died.

Photos: Cuban groups in Miami, protesting the Administration's new policy on refugees, staged their biggest demonstration yet in Little Havana yesterday. (Annette Thompson for The New York Times); Cuban flags were present almost everywhere at yesterday's protest. (Associated Press)