In Miami, Another Billboard for the Cuban Five

Organizations that represent Cuban emigrants and make up the Martí Alliance and Radio Miami have hit another grand slam, according to an esteemed compatriot residing in Paris. After much difficulty and disheartening setbacks, these organizations have put up a billboard for the second time in the heart of Miami demanding the freedom of the Cuban Five: Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René.

This time, the sign put up on April 10 demanding the freedom of our brothers lasted 31 hours before the threats of the despotic forces governing Miami caused the owner of the billboard to break the contract and take down the just sign. The billboard was located on 17th Avenue and 1st Southwest Street in the center of Little Havana.

Jan. 11, 2011 was the first time that a billboard demanding the Cuban Five’s freedom was put up in this unlikely city. That one lasted 24 hours before the same forces were able to force its removal.

Perhaps the reason that this most recent billboard lasted longer was because these same forces were distracted by their involvement in an outrageous display of intolerance and condemnation toward Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Miami Marlins, that took place the same day that the billboard was put up. Guillen suffered through a humiliating hour-long press conference before Miami journalists, in which he apologized tearfully for having said in a recent Time interview, “I love Fidel Castro.”

Guillen had to morally get on his knees and beg before journalists in order to save his job as manager and his contract for four years at ten million dollars. The Marlins suspended him for five games and donated what would have been his income for these games to the extreme right-wing Cuban Americans that demanded his head. Miami press describes these Cuban Americans as nothing less than “pro-democracy.”

The few not directly mobilized by the anti-Castro community drove around with Cuban flags and posters that called for a Guillen beheading to take place in the new stadium. Others were too involved with their despicable treatment of Guillen to notice the billboard demanding freedom for the Cuban Five located just three blocks from the stadium.

How long will these savage and intolerant acts continue in Miami? How long will this appalling minority dictate and impose their whims and absurd judgments through violent threats on a Cuban community of more than two million people? Isn’t it time that a civic movement of weight rises to demand guarantees of democracy and freedom in Miami, equal to that practiced in the rest of the U.S., and that which we have been demanding for uncountable years?

While guarantees of democracy and freedom don’t exist in Miami, those of us who are opposed to the ideas, methods, and objectives of Miami terrorists and their allies in the press continue to work under these terrible circumstances, as we have done for the last 35 years.

Our unavoidable tasks include the maintenance of the fight for the Cuban Five’s freedom, demonstrated once again by our second billboard. We will exalt our commitment to the freedom of the Five in an untiring national and worldwide movement to obtain that freedom. Within a week an extraordinary conference — Five Days for the Cuban Five — sponsored by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five will begin in Washington. It will include conferences, exhibitions of drawings, films and documentary showings and lobbyist visits to congress members and senators, among other events.

The efforts of the Miami billboard complements those other efforts that will take place in Washington.

For our part, we will not cease until the Five are entirely free.

*Editor’s Note: for background on the Cuban Five, see http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/06/04/idUSN04314945.