In Other News: The Miami Edition

90 very, very long miles.

Well, it’s actually happening in El Paso, Texas and not Miami, but that’s just a technicality.

It was good to wake up to NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and this story about Cuban exile and former CIA employee Luis Posada Carriles. He went on trial yesterday in federal court in El Paso, Texas on charges related to a series of hotel bombings in Havana in the mid-1990’s. And no story defines the wide chasm that in reality is only a 90 mile stretch between Miami and Cuba, better than the tale of Luis Posada Carriles.  

At 82 years of age, Posada is only a year younger than my own mother. He is a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and worked for the CIA. It has long been thought that he was behind the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 – 73 people were killed. But this trial is about a bomb that went off in a Havana hotel in 1997, where an Italian tourist was killed. Prosecutors say they have transcript evidence of a Posada taking responsibility for the bombing.

In short, a life devoted to getting rid of Castro, by any means necessary.

Most interesting about the NPR piece, was reporter Greg Allen’s interview with Cuban-American writer and commentator Humberto Fontova. It so very clearly exemplifies the mentality that still exists in Miami among the elders of the refugee community – defense of Cuban militants, at all costs. Fontova begins by questioning the fact that the U.S. may introduce evidence on the Havana bombing gathered by the government of Cuba. Cuban officials will also testify.

Of the Cuban witnesses, he says...

Mr. HUMBERTO FONTOVA (Writer, Commentator): They're representatives of a totalitarian regime whose co-founder, Che Guevara, said the following: Judicial evidence is an archaic, bourgeois detail. Now, does it make sense to have officials from that regime at this trial?

ALLEN: Fontova says he doesn't know if Posada was involved in the bombing or not, but he explains his sympathy for Posada - and other aging Cuban militants accused of terrorism - this way:

Mr. FONTOVA: Put yourself in these men's places. The men of the Bay of Pigs generation, and the tremendous sense of betrayal that they felt, you know - to them, the battle wasn't over.

ALLEN: Posada isn't being charged with terrorism, but perjury related to testimony at an immigration hearing. In 2005, after decades of living abroad, Posada turned up in Miami and asked first for asylum, then naturalization. Eventually, that request was denied, and Posada was charged with lying and several other immigration violations.

The Obama administration significantly upped the ante when it added perjury charges related to the Cuban bombing to the indictment against Posada. The trial beginning tomorrow will mark the first time he'll have to answer in a U.S. courtroom to longstanding charges.

And indeed, when the trial began yesterday, the “distance” between Miami and Havana was once again obvious. The fraying of the "Cuban family," so close in distance and so far apart in interpretation of reality.

Outside, the two groups of demonstrators kept a respectful distance from each other on the broad plaza in front of the building.

About 60 protesters demanded that Posada be extradited to Venezuela or Cuba to face terrorism charges for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner in which 73 people were killed and a string of bombings of Havana tourism spots in 1997 that killed one Italian tourist.

About 50 feet away, a group of Posada supporters waved U.S. flags.

Despite lack of coverage, lots of people are watching this story.