MURDEROUS ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ, CUBA

Iskander Maleras and Luis Valverde By Cuba Archive Staff | Published 04/9/2006 | Case Profiles | Rating:
Maleras and Valverde: 1994 exit attempt

Iskander Maleras Pedraza

ISKANDER MALERAS PEDRAZA, Age 26, AND LUIS ANGEL VALVERDE LINFERNAL, Exact age unknown (in his 30s).

Assassinated January 19, 1994 while trying to gain asylum by entering the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo, Cuba.

Maleras was a resident of Guantánamo, Cuba. He had been repeatedly harassed and threatened by police, State Security, and neighborhood Communist Party watchdogs, for openly declaring his opposition to the Castro regime. Detained on numerous occasions, in one instance he had endured three months of prison on a fabricated charge of stealing horses. The case had been thrown out on trial only when another plaintiff testified the parties did not know Maleras and had been instructed to lie about his involvement.

On January 19, 1994, Maleras and Valverde with two other young men, Luis Gustavo Matos, and Eduardo Serante Gonzalez, attempted to flee Cuba trying to reach the Guantanamo Naval Base by raft. Maleras, not knowing how to swim, was on top of the very small raft, while the others pulled it as they swam towards the base.

When they were about 50 meters from the shore of the U.S. Naval Base, two Cuba border guards (José Barceló Escalona and Iván Fuentes Ramírez), opened fire with AKMs, killing Maleras and Valverde. The other two pled for clemency and took cover under water. Matos was injured on one foot and left to bleed to death, but was able to swim away at nightfall, making it to the U.S. base. Serante was captured, tried, and sentenced to house arrest instead of prison due to the public commotion the assassinations had caused. He later went into exile and lives in Florida.

The government refused to return the bodies of Maleras and Valverde to their families for a funeral and burial. Instead, they were buried naked in unmarked graves at the St. Raphael Cemetary of Guantanamo, designated by the government for victims of border guards or mine fields by the U.S. Naval Base.

The crime caused great commotion in the city of Guantamano, as the parents were very well known and respected professionals. Government authorities did not allow visits to the family home or the cemetery and posted patrols on the streets. The border guards were given awards for their deed, while prominent government figures went on local radio and TV to denounce the young men as "traitors, counter-revolutionaries and anti-social elements.”

Soon after the killings, the family was told by neighbors that a local school had on display the photos of the bodies ravaged by bullets, to impress upon the children the high cost of attempting to escape the country.

Iskander's sister was fired from her job as a music teacher at the university and was unable to find employment due to the stigma that befell the family. They endured so much harassment from the government that they had to go into exile after obtaining political asylum in the United States.

Iskander's mother writes that Iskander was born on September 15, 1967 and was the youngest of three siblings. He was very generous, had many friends, and was an avid cyclist. Her loss is incalculable and she will not rest until justice for her son is done.

Sources: Written and telephone testimony of Eulalia Nilda Pedraza, Iskander’s mother, Resident of Florida, February and April of 2006; Personal testimony by mother of August 2006; Testimony to La Nueva Cuba of Eulalia Pedraza of January 12, 2006, http://www.lanuevacuba.com/nuevacuba/notic-06-01-1370.htm.

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THE WILL TO FREEDOM

CUBA
Legless Cuban survivor finally reaches U.S.
After 15 years and the loss of both legs, a Cuban rafter finally arrived in Miami to tell about his harrowing escape.
BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA
El Nuevo Herald

ROBERTO KOLTUN/EL NUEVO HERALD
Amado Veloso Vega lost both legs to a mine as he tried to slip into Gitmo in 1992.

He had managed to crawl through the third barrier between Cuban territory and the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo when the warning flares lit the night sky.
Amado Veloso Vega thought he'd stay there till dawn, confident the Cuban guards could not enter the mine-laden strip dubbed ''no-man's land.'' But then he heard shots, and when he tried to move, a mine exploded, destroying his legs and flinging him 15 feet.
With no strength to shout, Veloso lay there until he heard the soldiers approach.
It was the beginning of a 15-year odyssey to get to the United States that ended this week. Veloso, 36, arrived in Miami on Monday with a U.S. State Department humanitarian visa.
Veloso is headed for Louisville, Ky., where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which sponsored him, has found him a home.
''I'm still pinching myself, because I can't believe it. I'm in Miami!'' he said this week at his Miami hotel. ``I want to laugh because I believe I suffered enough. In Cuba, I was a walking dead man.''
The details of his horrific 1992 experience with the mine remain vivid today. ''Strips of flesh dangled from my legs. I was disfigured and my mouth was torn,'' he recalled. ``I couldn't react, though I didn't lose consciousness altogether.''
He'll never forget one man and what he said. Vega, a short man in uniform, told another that Veloso ''wouldn't make it alive'' to the hospital in Guantánamo.
''They started to play with me. They bayoneted me in the hand and in the leg and then pulled me off the fence,'' Veloso said, showing his scars.
Veloso was taken directly to the morgue. There, a doctor wouldn't give up, injecting him with adrenaline. Veloso was revived.
He slowly returned to health, but his nightmare wasn't over. For the attempted escape, Cuban authorities sentenced Veloso to two years of detention at his Havana home. A mystery remains: The mine that did so much damage was in Cuban territory, but at the time, some U.S.-planted mines were in the area, too.
Veloso said he tried to remake his life but that even relatives and friends turned their backs on him. He sought prosthetic legs at a Havana hospital. ``They concluded that my accident was due to my attempt to leave the country illegally and told me the [prostheses] they had were for revolutionaries and fighters back from Angola.''
Then he met activist Francisco Chaviano -- now a political prisoner in Cuba -- who arranged for the Cuban American National Foundation to send him a wheelchair. The chair was presented to Veloso in the name of Jorge Mas Canosa, the organization's founder. Veloso and a medical specialist friend fashioned a pair of plaster prostheses.
Early in 1994, Veloso applied for a refugee visa at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, but he says the office turned him down. He then wrote to U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who answered his letter and agreed to support his application, as did Rep. Lincoln Díaz Balart.
The association with Miami exile politicians caught the attention of the Cuban government. 'State Security constantly visited my home. `Who are you? First, Mas Canosa. Then, Ros-Lehtinen and Díaz-Balart. What are you up to?' they would ask me,'' Veloso said.
During the 1994 Cuban rafter crisis, Veloso tried to escape on a makeshift boat, but he was caught. Ensuing attempts failed as well.
``I lost track of all the arrests and fines. Something compelled me to look for what I couldn't find in Cuba: respect for a human being, respect for life and the right to overcome my handicap.''
In September 2006, during the police raids that preceded the Summit of Non-Aligned Countries in Havana, Veloso made his final attempt to flee. With 15 others he bought a homemade boat made of aluminum tubes. Police intercepted the others before they arrived at the beach, so he decided to travel alone from Cajío Beach in Havana.
'The boat was known as a `tube of toothpaste.' They are made of six aluminum tubes and cost about $4,000,'' he said.
The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted him 27 miles from the Mexican island of Cozumel and sent him to the place that reminded him of his personal tragedy: the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo.
There he remained for nine months, working as a bowling alley assistant. Part of the money he earned he sent to his mother, wife and two children who remain in Cuba.
''That people would risk their lives, like Amado did, that they would risk everything, clearly demonstrates the desperation of Cubans on the island,'' Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, told El Nuevo Herald on Tuesday.
Today Veloso wants to place flowers on Mas Canosa's grave. ''When I look at it from afar, I feel it was worth it,'' he said of his odyssey. ``It's a high price, but it's the price of liberty.''
wcancio@elnuevoherald.com