Kick Ass (12 page)

Nobody’s forcing Spanish down mine, nor would I force English down theirs. You can’t. Assimilation happens at its own paceand, believe it or not, it is happening here.

Bob Joffe, a well-known pollster, writes that “Spanish is dying among Hispanic voters” in Dade. What he means is that bilingualism is rising significantly. More than half of foreign-born Hispanic voters surveyed said they didn’t care if they were interviewed in English or Spanish.

Such increasing fluency suggests that, 20 years from now, language won’t be such a burning issue. Let’s hope not, because it’s the least of our troubles. Runaway growth, runaway crime, the water crisis, government wasteyou want something heavy to worry about, take your pick.

Find people who can solve those problems, and it won’t matter if they speak English, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. We’ll find an interpreter. It’s not the language that counts, it’s the ideas.

Safe parks act worthy of a vote

October 27, 1996

In a political season that can charitably be described as uninspiring, there is actually something worth voting for.

It’s called the Safe Neighborhood Parks Act, one of the most promising crime-fighting ideas to reach a ballot in Dade County.

It won’t build a single new prison cell, or put one more police officer on the beat. What it might do is take thousands of at-risk kids off the street and give them places to play.

Working with the nationally recognized Trust for Public Land, a grassroots citizens’ coalition proposes to raise $200 million for improving about 170 county and neighborhood parks.

The money would come from a sale of general obligation bonds. Cost to the average Dade property owner: about $8 a year. “The price of a pizza,” says Hank Adorno, a former prosecutor who is helping to lead the campaign.

State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and others believe the Safe Parks Act will cut juvenile crime, which is exploding in Dade at a chilling, almost inconceivable pace. They say more kids can be saved if they’ve got somewhere else to go, and something else to do.

No matter where you live, the parks program would touch your family: in Northwest Dade, soccer and softball fields at Amelia Earhart; in the Grove, refurbishment of the Virrick Gym; in South Dade, lights for the athletic field at Benito Juarez.

There’s also money for the Haulover pier, the Crandon beaches, the campground at Greynolds and select purchases of open and threatened green space.

Each project is described on the Nov. 5 ballotreading through the list would be worth a few minutes of your time.

It sounds almost too good to be true. And if you’ve been reading the headlines the last few months, the obvious question is: How much of the $200 million really will go to the parks, and how much will be diverted or stolen?

Says Adorno: “I think we’ve made it politician-proof.”

The ordinance provides that the bond money can be used only for capital projects, not for operating costs, debts or exigencies. If a municipality doesn’t budget enough funds to maintain a park, it won’t receive anything for improvements.

An oversight committee of citizens will be appointed by the Metro Commission, to make sure that the monies are spent only on voter-approved projects, and that beachfront cabanas don’t get priority over inner-city gyms.

The ordinance also calls for independent audits, and allows taxpayers to sue if the park funds are misused or ripped off.

That’s not to say every penny will be safe from thieves and incompetents. It is Dade County, after all. The program is doomed without keen-eyed, fair-handed supervision.

But strong, overriding arguments favor the parks bond. First, it’s been done before successfully, almost 25 years ago. A result was Tamiami Park, Tropical Park and Metrozoo, three of the county’s most popular recreation sites.

Second, something tangible must be done for a generation of restless urban kids who are, in shocking numbers, turning to crime and gangs. The cost to taxpayers of incarcerating just one is $40,000 a year. The tab for a career felon is stratospheric.

So the Safe Neighborhood Parks Act becomes a community investment, as well as an act of faith.

Of course the juvenile crisis is too complex to be solved simply by lighting a basketball court or building a swimming pool. But if it keeps one kid off the street corners and out of trouble, that’s a pretty good start.

Easily worth the price of a pizza.[“#chapter_04”]

Rules Are Different Here

Stowaways ran in pursuit of their destiny

December 4, 1985

This fall, an Australian media tycoon named Rupert Murdoch was granted U.S. citizenship just so he could purchase seven television stations.

Last week, five Haitian stowaways seeking work in America arrived on a freighter in Fort Lauderdale. They weren’t offered citizenship. They weren’t even allowed off the boat.

In a scene straight from Victor Hugo, the men were left to swelter for days in an airless hellhole aboard the freighter Alco Trader.

The Bahamas, where they came from, didn’t want them; neither did the United States. As both countries quarreled, the ship sloshed back and forth across the Gulf Stream, the stowaways its wretched prisoners.

This sad scene may be repeated in coming months as the Bahamas conducts a coldhearted purge of as many as 40,000 Haitians, many of whom have lived and worked in the islands for years.

For these Haitians, Florida is the next logical destiny, but there will be no parades for them here, either.

If the Alco Traderstowaways had been Cubans, Nicaraguans or Russians, you would have seen mobs of angry pickets and demonstrators. Congressmen would have lunged for the telephone, and the refugees would have been whisked to civilized quarters.

And if the stowaways seeking asylum had been Czechoslovakian tennis stars, you would have seen the red carpet rolling out; accommodations in the Hilton, not a hot box.

But Haitians have scant political clout and, so, are of scant use to those in high office. “They were treated like animals,” says Father Tom Wenski of the Haitian Catholic Center. “What are they trying to come here for? For life. For a better life.”

This country cannot absorb all the hemisphere’s poor, but we also can’t afford an immigration policy that is a contradictory mess. We speak in one voice to the rich and white, like Murdoch, and in another voice to the poor and black or brown. Meanwhile Congress remains unable to pass a cogent, equitable and humane law.

Haitians are shunned, yet millions of illegal Mexicans get work because Big Agriculture depends on them. Cubans are admitted as political refugees, while Haitians are rejected as “economic refugees”; in truth, there’s little difference.

Haiti’s stark poverty results partly from its despotic politics, a fact conveniently overlooked in Washington. President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier is a friend and anti-Communist, and we do not upset our anti-Communist friends with talk of human rights.

But the plight of many Haitians is as pitiable as anything in Castro’s Cuba; the poverty is more killing, and political persecution not only real but sometimes violent. This summer three Catholic priests were expelled from Haiti for speaking out against the Duvalier regime. A week ago three student protesters were shot to death by Haitian troops in the town of Gonaives.

If this is not repression, I’d love for someone at the State Department to tell me what is.

We Americans have a strange way of deciding who deserves to be in this country, and who doesn’t. Citizen Murdoch wasn’t fleeing political persecution in Australia; he came here to multiply his fortune.

Just like the Haitians in the cargo box.

Last Friday, the hot and hungry stowaways escaped from their stinking cell. It is unclear whether a guard looked the other way, or simply made a mistake, but I’d like to think the deed was the work of a compassionate heart.

Who can blame the men for escaping? I would have done the same; so would you. So would anyone with a shred of dignity.

If tradition holds, the refugees will soon find jobs, homes and sanctuary among 90,000 Haitian countrymen now living in South Florida. Much of the money they earn will be mailed home to poor relatives.

Somehow I feel better about the stowaways on the loose than I do about Rupert Murdoch.

Mass murders haunt Mayan asking refuge

June 27, 1986

Her name is Petrona Mateo Esteban. She is from Guatemala. She came to the United States because something horrible happened to her family in the highland village where she lived.

The United States says Petrona should not stay here, that it’s safe for her to go home; there is a new government in Guatemala and things are looking up.

This week Petrona’s deportation trial began in U.S. Immigration Court in Miami. It was a most unusual proceeding.

Petrona is a Kanjobal Indian, one of about 800 who have resettled in Indiantown as migrants. She is 26, and partially crippled from a childhood disease. She speaks neither English nor Spanish, only the unique Mayan dialect of her village.

The court interpreter, the only one to understand Kanjobal, had learned a language slightly different from Petrona’s. Her story, painful to recall under any circumstances, became excruciating in Judge Neale Foster’s court.

She wore a beautiful Mayan dress and sat impassively on the witness stand. Often she spoke in little more than a shy whisper. She tried to tell how they had practically skinned her father alive.

In 1982 Petrona’s village, El Mul, was caught in Guatemala’s vicious civil war. The guerrillas would raid the rural towns for food and chickens; then the army would sweep in, tracking the insurgents and punishing those thought to have aided them.

Defense attorney Peter Upton: “How do you know there was a war?”

Petrona: “Because the helicopters came by.”

Q. “What were the helicopters doing?”

A. “They were dropping bombs and shooting bullets.”

Later Upton asked: “Did the soldiers ever kill anyone in your family?”

A. “They came and killed my father

he was taken by them and beaten by them

It was 6 in the morning. We were sleeping at the time. They broke down the door.”

Petrona said the army men seized her father and two brothers, Esteban and Alonzo, and dragged them away from the others. Alonzo was only 14. Petrona said the soldiers beat them with rifles and hacked them with machetes. She and her mother ran for their lives.

After the soldiers had gone, Petrona said, she came back and found her home burned to the ground. Her brothers and father lay dead. Her father’s features were “destroyed.” His hands had been bound behind him; Petrona untied the rope.

In all, 11 men were murdered in El Mul that morning. Petrona said she remembered their names, they were her neighbors: Tomas Augustin, his son Daniel, Miguel Jose, Mateo Martin, Esteban Martin, and so on.

After the massacre Petrona eventually fled to Mexico to pick cotton and coffee. From there she made her way to America.

She does not fully understand the politics of her country, but what she knows is this: Men with guns came from the hills and invaded her village. They stole her family’s food. Other men in uniforms arrived and stole more. They also slaughtered her father.

As you might imagine, Petrona does not wish to go home.

Kathy Hersh of the American Friends Service Committee says of the Mayans: “They were really caught in the crossnre.They are apolitical.The government doesn’t know what to do with them.”

Six months ago Guatemala elected its first civilian government since 1966.The United States says this is a new leaf, that the military is enlisting “civil patrols” to improve its image and help battle insurgents. Unfortunately, more than 700 men and women have been murdered in political violence since the new regime came to power.

Petrona seeks asylum here. Her case, and those of other Mayans, probably won’t be settled until early next year. The immigration court must decide if the Kanjobales would be singled out for violence if they returned home, if they have a well-founded fear of persecution.

What Petrona Mateo Esteban has is simply a well-founded fear of death.

You’ve got to have a racket to get asylum

January 8, 1988

Maybe the answer is tennis rackets.

I was wondering what it takes to convince U.S. immigration authorities that Haitians seeking political asylum in this country now have a legitimate claim.

Massacres of voters in the streets apparently are not sufficient evidence of persecution, nor is the assassination of a presidential candidate and attacks on his supporters.

After all the bloodshed and terror, Haitians fleeing to the United States are still being turned back, and many of those here still face deportation.

So I was wondering what it takes to be considered a political refugee, when along comes the case of Madalina Liliana Voinea. She is a ^-year-old tennis player from the Communist-bloc country of Romania.

You’ll remember that, shortly before Christmas, Madalina came to Miami Beach to play in the Rolex International Tennis Championships at Flamingo Park. After a scheduling mix-up, she got in a cab, went to the Miami airport and asked for asylum.

You’ve never seen our government work so fast.

After a two-hour interview, INS district director Perry Rivkind decided that Madalina would face persecution if she went back to her homeland. Said Rivkind: “If she returned, she would be restricted from playing tennis, from going to college, and maybe she would be jailed.”

Asylum was promptly granted, a press conference was called and a new media sweetheart was born. Madalina immediately got on a plane to New York, where, according to United Press International, she “spent the day shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue and strolling down Fifth Avenue admiring the window displays.”

Personally, I wouldn’t want to go back to Romania either, but the haste and fanfare with which the INS welcomed Madalina to America is puzzling to other applicants.

The usual criterion for granting political asylum is a “well-founded fear” of persecution. As human rights violations go, it’s hard to compare a machete murder with somebody nixing a six-figure endorsement deal for Puma tennis sneakers.

Madalina came here courtesy of the Romanian government, which regards its promising young athletes as national assets, and treats them accordingly. Compared to most of her countrymen, she led the charmed life. Compared to Haitians, she lived in a paradise.

Based on the examples of Ivan Lendl and Martina Navratilova, it certainly will be easier for Madalina to become a millionaire as an American. This is true for athletes from practically any other country, Communist or not. Everyone wants to play in the United States because there’s more money here.

Haiti doesn’t produce many international tennis stars, as most people are too busy trying to find food and avoid getting shot by government-backed goons.

Given Madalina’s case, if I were scheming to escape Haitiand who wouldn’t be, with the rigged election coming up?the first thing I’d do is get myself an inexpensive tennis racket.

As soon as I got stopped by the Coast Guard or Border Patrol, I’d tell them that I was a budding tennis star, trying to make it to Wimbledon. I’d say that I could never go back to Haitinot because of the gross political atrocities, but because they don’t have any good grass courts.

What would the INS say to this? Imagine the scene if the next rickety boat to hit our beach delivered 200 people carrying Wilson tennis rackets and asking where’s the next tournament.

Something tells me there would be no big press conferences, no happy feature stories, no trip to New York for a stroll down Fifth Avenue.

Somebody in Washington would come up with a new excuse as to why young Madalina Voinea is welcome, and the Haitians are not.

Maybe it would be the tennis rackets themselves. Maybe only refugees playing with graphite get asylum.

Immigration’s double standard is an outrage

July 15, 1991

Sen. Connie Mack has arrived at the startling conclusion that U.S. immigration policy appears unfair in its disparate treatment of Haitian and Cuban refugees.

There’s a real shocker. The Haitians have been getting shafted for only about a dozen years now. It’s nice that somebody in Washington finally noticed.

Mack’s moment of revelation came after two outrageous incidents made the double standard impossible to ignore.

On July 7, a Coast Guard cutter intercepted a wooden sailboat packed with 161 Haitian refugees and two Cuban rafters, whom the Haitians had rescued at sea. The Cubans were brought to Miami, while most of the Haitians were returned to Port-au-Prince.

Even the most coldhearted bureaucrat could grasp the awful irony. To the Haitians on that creaky sailboat, the Cuban rafters must’ve seemed like kindred travelerspoor, like themselves, but brave enough to risk an ocean crossing in pursuit of a new life. Of course the Haitians would reach out and help; they shared the same dream.

Then with the interdiction came the bad news, and excuses: The Cubans get to stay because Cuba won’t take them back. The Haitians have to go because Haiti will. So much for being good Samaritans. News of the refugees’ plight sent a crackle of anger through Miami’s Haitian community. This time the discrimination was so flagrantand the juxtaposition so sadthat politicians had no place to hide. How could one seriously defend a policy that welcomed Cuban refugees but rejected the Haitians who had saved them?

Last week, a new spark erupted. All it took was one stark, indelible image on television: Haitian stowaways, manacled and caged on the hot deck of a freighter.

It could’ve been a flashback to the 1500s, when slave ships sailed the tropics. But this was 1991 in Miami, Florida. The United States of America.

Where men whose only crime was to seek a better future were being locked in chains.

The five stowaways were removed from the freighter and brought to the Haitian consulate. Arrangements were made to send them home. When immigration officers arrived to take them to the airport, the Haitians cried and struggled and begged to stay. In the scuffle, one managed to escape.

Most of that, too, was captured on television. It was painful to watch.

But if you stayed tuned a little longer, you saw another kind of immigration story, one with a cheerier angle. A young Cuban baseball player named Rene Arocha had defected to the United States, slipping away from his teammates during a stopover in Miami.