Miami Beach Hispanic Affairs Committee unanimously opposes Castro Consulate

An exercise in  Grassroots Democracy

Last night in the City Hall of Miami Beach

Last night at the Miami Beach Hispanic Affairs Committee there was a meeting convened at 6:30pm to discuss  whether Miami Beach should be the new home to a Cuban consulate. At the meeting I made the case that was presented on this blog over the past few days concerning the threat posed by a Castro consulate to lives and property and listened to other points of view. Orlando Gutierrez outlined the espionage and criminal activities carried out by the Castro regime at their diplomatic posts and its implication for Miami Beach: “This disruptive activity by the Castro regime will pose a threat to the overall stability of this world renowned destination.” In contrast with this view was Commissioner Ricky Arriola who repeated his belief that "allowing for a Cuban consulate in the city would be a 'good way to help people.'" He argued the "need to service our constituents who are clearly going to be traveling to Cuba." However there is evidence that a Cuban consulate would not have "customer service" as a priority.

This reality was on full display last year when a Cuban national was denied service at the Cuban embassy and consulate in Washington DC.  On July 21, 2015 when  Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo, a Cuban national, attempted to present a letter to the Cuban consulate and embassy requesting her father's autopsy report she was not allowed to turn in the letter and a patrol car was called. Since 2012 the Payá family has been requesting Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas's autopsy report from the dictatorship and has yet to be given a copy as they are entitled by law.

Ironically Commissioner Arriola and Mayor Levine met with Gustavo Machin Gomez who is both a diplomat and Castro regime intelligence agent who in 2012 was involved in the cover up of the extrajudicial killing of Cuban human rights defender. In 2000 the same diplomat led a mob of ten Cuban diplomats to physically assault Cuban American demonstrators with their fists and sticks in Washington DC outside of the Cuban Interests Section (today the embassy). Mr. Machin Gomez and the other diplomats were so aggressive that they accidentally beat up a U.S. secret service agent who was observing in the vicinity.

Carnival Corporation's The Adonia

 Unmentioned last night, because it is not directly related, but reveals the attitude of the dictatorship in Cuba towards Cubans and Cuban Americans is the controversy surrounding Carnival corporation going along with long standing regulations by the Castro regime in discriminating against an entire class of people based on their national origin which it explained in the following statement:

Cuba has a longstanding regulation that no Cuban-born individuals are allowed to travel from anywhere in the world to and from Cuba by ship. This regulation applies to all cruise lines, ferries and any form of shipping planning to travel to and from Cuba.

Carnival Corporation was granted approval to travel to Cuba by the U.S. in July 2015, and on March 21 by Cuba for our sailing on our new Fathom brand starting on May 1.

 According to the Daily Telegraph, Cuban Americans are banned from the first cruise to Cuba in decades and the first victim of the ban, is a Cuban American academic who has been traveling to the island since 1978 to visit family and for academic research and is an advocate for normalized relations with the dictatorship:

Cuban-born Maria de los Angela Torres, an academic at the University of Illinois, tried to book a cabin on a Fathom cruise to the Caribbean island and was put on a waiting list for a $2,470 ocean-view cabin. She came unstuck when the reservation agent requested her passport information. The country has a longstanding regulation that forbids Cuban-born individuals, regardless of US citizenship, to travel from the US to Cuba by seagoing vessels, including cruise ships and ferries.

 Unfortunately what Commissioner Arriola is unwittingly advocating is the empowerment of  the Castro regime to continue violate norms and not be held accountable for its continued discrimination, abuse and repression against 11 million Cubans and opens up the possibility of complicity in the discrimination against Cuban Americans when what took place at the Cuban Consulate in Washington, DC is undoubtedly repeated elsewhere in the United States and if Arriola and Levine have their way, this would include Miami Beach.

Last night an African American talk show host addressed the Miami Beach Hispanic Affairs Committee in opposition to the Cuban Consulate in Miami Beach pointing out the shameful history of Miami Beach that in 1915 did not allow African Americans to reside there forcing them into what would become Overtown. Cuban Americans, although not to the extreme experienced by African Americans, suffered discrimination when they arrived in South Florida in the early 1960s according to the academic scholar Dario Moreno:

In Miami in the early 1960s, it was common to find signs posted in apartment buildings that read: "No Pets, No Kids, No Cubans." Moreover, during the 1960s and 1970s, due to the urging of local Anglo politicians new Cuban refugees were relocated outside of Dade County in an effort to prevent the political empowerment of Cubans.

It is a sad testament that in 2016 a small group of Cuban Americans would be pursuing policies that take Cubans and Cuban Americans back to the days that they were discriminated against by Americans because of their national origin. However, it is doubly painful because it is being done to placate the arbitrary rule of the Castro dictatorship from which they fled.

Thankfully last night after carefully listening to all points of view the Miami Beach Hispanic Affairs Committee unanimously opposed the opening of a Cuban Consulate in Miami Beach. Hopefully Mayor Levine and Commissioner Arriola will reconsider their position. Unfortunately last night Arriola described the following resolution as "harmful":

Commission should formally oppose Cuban consulate in city so long as Cuban government continues its violation of basic freedoms and human rights violations.

Commissioner Arriola's argument that not having a Consulate in South Beach will necessitate traveling to Tampa is absurd. For example Norway has three general consulates in New York, Houston and San Francisco that in past have handled applications all over the United States through postal or messenger services. Currently, consulate matters with the Castro regime are handled in the Embassy in Washington DC (and before that in the Cuba Interests Section) and the Mission in New York City and can be handled in the same manner through the post. 

One final observation, perhaps for the sake of truth in advertising the debate should center around opening a "Castro Consulate" because it has already been demonstrated that the Embassy and Consulate in Washington DC does not serve Cubans or represent them but rather the Castro dictatorship.

Why opening a Cuban consulate in South Florida is a bad idea

The dangers of a Cuban consulate

Miami Beach Mayor and Commissioner met with Cuban spy involved in Oswaldo Payá cover up

 Miami mayor Tomas Regalado is correct when he says that opening a Cuban consulate, with the current regime, would be a security risk that would endanger lives in South Florida.  However now Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine and Commissioner Ricky Arriola, apparently ignoring this concern, are advocating opening the consulate on Miami Beach.

Unfortunately for them their highly publicized meeting in Cuba demonstrates why this is a bad idea. They met with a "Cuban diplomat" who was expelled from the United States for his espionage activities. Chris S. Simmons, a 23-year Counterintelligence Officer, from 1996-2004 deeply involved with the majority of US Counterintelligence successes against the Castro regime provides background on the Cuban Foreign Ministry's, deputy director of North American affairs:

The son of a revolutionary hero, Gustavo Machin Gomez, was expelled in November 2002 in retaliation for the Ana Belen Montes case. In 2003, he was Deputy Director of MINREX’s North America Division and Chief the following year. In 2006, he was appointed Cuba’s first ambassador to Pakistan, where he is believed to have targeted US counterterrorism operations in the region. He then returned home to head the International Press Center before his current assignment.

According to Simmons, Machin was involved in the operation to "spin" the death of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in 2012:

One example of Machin’s use of his position to conduct Influence Operations is seen in the article, “Jens Aron Modig confirmed Cuba’s version of the accident and acknowledged that he gave money to Payá.” (http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs3500.html)  This article discusses the International Press Center’s new conference starring Jens Aron Modig, the Swedish politician who was with Paya during the vehicle accident that took his life.  It reads, in part, “Modig was presented to the press by Gustavo Machin, director of the International Press Center, attached to the Cuban Foreign Ministry, and was in good physical condition despite being slightly injured in the accident. At the time of writing this information Jens Aron Modig appeared before the accredited foreign journalists in Cuba.”[emphasis added]

We now know that Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero were killed in an incident in which state security agents hit their car in a second vehicle, but the rest of what happened afterwards and how both men died requires an independent investigation.

A Cuban consulate in Miami-Dade County would operate as an espionage center used to target Cuban exiles, American military facilities in the area, and other targets. What this would mean in practice can be seen in the information that emerged during the WASP network trial.

The Cuban "WASP" spies arrested in 1998 used coded material on computer disks to communicate with other members of the spy network. Below are two excerpts from the 1,300 pages taken from those diskettes translated and used during the spy trial that demonstrate the criminal nature of the Cuban regime's operation in South Florida. In the first excerpt it declares that their primary objective was "penetrating and obtaining information on the naval station located in that city." In the next excerpt intelligence operatives communicated about "burning down the warehouse" and sabotaging Brothers to the Rescue equipment. Also requested that they attempt to identify who would be flying at certain times.  In the final excerpt operatives discuss plans to prepare a "book bomb" so that it evades post office security while at the same time phoning death threats to a man they describe as a CIA agent and then having him killed via the mail bomb.

This Cuban spy network gathered information that led to the murder of three Americans and a permanent U.S. resident on February 24, 1996. The head of that network Gerardo Hernandez was sentenced to a double life sentence, one of which was for murder conspiracy. President Obama commuted his sentence and returned him to Cuba on December 17, 2014.

The first duty of government is to afford protection to its citizens. Opening a Cuban consulate in Miami-Dade County will needlessly endanger the lives and security of South Florida residents and would be a failure of governance.

Liberation of Auschwitz 70 years ago today: A Reflection

It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere. - Primo Levi, 1986 The Drowned and the Saved

Seventy years ago today on January 27, 1945 the concentration/extermination camp known as Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops. Today 300 survivors of this death camp together with world leaders gathered there to remember. This day is now recognized by the United Nations as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and is observed around the world but not in Israel. In Israel in 2015 Holocaust Day (Yom HaShoah ) will be observed on April 15 at sundown.


Today the world remembers the role Soviet troops played in liberating the camp, but without the Soviet Union's actions in 1939 the atrocity in Auschwitz may have never happened. Auschwitz came into existence on May 20, 1940 when the Nazis and Soviets were still allies. This event took place following the August 23, 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact which included secret protocols to divide up Poland through military conquest. Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the West on September 1, 1939. The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East on September 17, 1939. The two armies met and marched together in Brest-Litovsk, Poland on September 22, 1939. Russian revisionists would like to rewrite this history.

Unfortunately, the Russians are not the only ones that would like to forget what really happened. American corporations played a role in making the Holocaust possible. For example, beginning with the National Socialists arrival to power the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) provided the Nazis with ground breaking technologies, precursors to computers, that were used to identify and categorize holocaust victims. According to an October 8, 2002 article in The Village Voice "the infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number.

IBM engineered a strategic business alliance with Nazi Germany and provided the punch card technology that would be used in managing the vast apparatus of the Nazi death camps. Equally troubling is that the NAZIS were able to arrive in a town with lists of names of people identified as being Jewish to round them up. Where did they get the data? From IBM Germany's census operations and similar advanced people counting and registration technologies. IBM technologically enabled the Holocaust.

Henry Ford of Ford Motors, in addition to himself personally being extremely antisemitic, had extensive relations and investments in Nazi Germany. This included factories assisting the Nazi war effort that continued through World War 2.

This blog is based out of the Cuban exile quarter which is in Miami, a city shared with a large Jewish population. Holocaust survivors are present here among us with the tattoos on their wrists bearing silent testament to this great crime. Sadly, Cubans too bear responsibility for Jewish suffering. May 27 through June 6, 1939 spanned the period when corrupt Cuban officials extorted desperate Jewish refugees aboard the SS St. Louis fleeing Nazi Germany and then thanks to popular anti-immigrant fervor refused to grant them safe harbor leading the ship to try its luck with the United States only to be denied and forced to return to Europe where many of the passengers would later perish in the gas chambers of the holocaust.Nor is it a coincidence that Jewish refugees were not let into Cuba in 1939 and a  Jewish man was not allowed to leave Cuba in 2009 but rotted for five years in prison for trying to help Cuban Jews.

S.S. St. Louis docked in Havana Harbor in 1939

A Cuban exile sculptor, Tony López, worked on The Holocaust Memorial located on Miami Beach which is a powerful work that preserves memory for future generations of this terrible crime. We will never forget this horrendous crime or remain silent before future injustices.