To the Editor,

This letter is a response to the editorial written by FIU professor Dr. Lisandro Perez in el Nuevo Herald today July 26, 1994. We are students at Florida International University who attended the lecture "Mirar a Cuba", at Florida International University (FIU). We did not participate in the discussion after the lecture, but we did observe the crowds actions. I am deeply outraged by Dr. Lisandro Perez's characterization of these interruptions as an "Act of repudiation."

First, every individual who brought up the issue of human rights waited until the end of the lecture and slide show and waited until the moderator gave them the floor. They did not shout anyone down, nor did they attack the speaker they simply stated their position on human rights in Cuba. Perhaps, Dr. Perez has spent to much time with his Cuban colleagues in Havana and is unfamiliar with the right of the people to exercise freedom of speech, but apparently his time in Cuba has not taught him what is an "act of repudiation." Questioners who engage in making speeches and asking questions that have nothing to do with a lecture may bore the intellectual elite at FIU, but this is not an act of repudiation. Under Dr. Perez's definition every time Bill Clinton undergoes a press conference and is asked probing questions he is undergoing an act of repudiation. The professor's editorial is a poor, and mean-spirited attempt to equate Cuban exiles with the totalitarian nightmare in Cuba.

An act of repudiation as defined by Amnesty International involves verbal and physical attacks sanctioned and orchestrated by the government. Rapid Response Brigades are sent to the victims home or follow them in the street and verbally and physically attack them. The Cuban government organizes these plain-clothes brigades as tools to crush dissent in Cuba.

In the case of Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Secretary General of the unofficial Comite Cubano Pro Derechos Humanos (CCPDH) crowds surrounded his home after the Cuban government displayed both his name and address prominently in big letters on television attempting to link him to "terrorists." He was later arrested. On February 15, 1992, 75 year old Jesus Yanes Pelletier was attacked in the street by a group of 15 people, who by their clothing appeared to him to be construction workers. He stood accused of writing counter-revolutionary letters."2 One of the most notorious cases involved, the prize winning poet, Maria Elena Cruz Varela who was held at her home for two days in the course of which she was physically attacked when several individuals forced their way in trying to force her to swallow documents found there. After this brutal attack she was sentenced to two years in prison for "illegal association" and "defamation." Dr. Perez's attempt to equate the suffering of these people with the discomfort he felt when Cuban exiles asked questions and presented testimony in a civilized manner is repugnant.

Dr. Lisandro Perez cites funding outside of the community as proof of his objectivity. According to Professor Perez the Ford Foundation, is funding the visits of Cuban academics and intellectuals to Florida International University. The Ford Foundation since the 1960's has had a history of supporting Left wing and "Progressive" causes to the tune of over $600 million dollars per year. In fact Henry Ford II has exposed the Foundation's Left-wing ideological slant.

"The Foundation is a creature of Capitalism, Henry Ford II said when he resigned in disgust from the foundation that bears his family name in 1977, adding that it was hard to discern any trace of capitalism,"in anything the Foundation does. It is even more difficult to find an understanding of this in many of the institutions, particularly the universities that are beneficiaries of the Foundation's grant program."1

Florida International University and Dr. Lisandro Perez are in good company when one considers some of the other groups funded by the Foundation." Among projects supported by the Ford Foundation was the attempt by La Raza to organize Hispanics in the Southwest. In 1982 the Urban institute was the recipient of a 3,500,000 Ford grant, which it used to produce a 26-volume critique of Reagan Administration welfare policies. Some of Ford's 1991 grantees include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation ($900,000), The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund ($500,000); the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law ($350,000); and filmmaker Henry Hampton who got ($200,000) to make a documentary on Malcolm X."1 Clearly, the Ford Foundation has a track record of funding political projects with a hard-left tilt, and the Cuban Research institute (CRI) fits neatly into this category. A left-wing apologist for the Castroite totalitarian dictatorship which gently critiques the system without condemning its Marxist-Leninist roots.

In the December 10, 1992 issue of the Beacon Dr. Lisandro Perez noted that "attempts to intimidate him to conform to the dominant exile ideology, to completely reject communism, have increased since he became director [of the Cuban Research Institute]."3 Is it little wonder that the CRI is viewed in Dr. Perez's own words, "as threatening to ... [exile ideology] and to the traditional Cuban leadership in Miami because we have attracted funding from outside the community for solid research programs on Cuba." Let us remember he is talking of the Ford Foundation which supports radical Left-wing agendas.

When Dr. Perez cites, in the Miami Herald, "academic and intellectual credentials" as the criteria on which these invitations are based he is once again being somewhat disingenuous in his attempt to paint this as a apolitical decision. In Cuba a student's cumulative academic record also includes a grade in political integration and political conduct of the student and his or her parents which is annually evaluated. "The record of political integration determines whether or not the student will have a higher education and which type of career can be pursued."4 Therefore, these "colleagues" are de-facto collaborators of the regime. "True, to survive in that nightmare one may have to compromise to survive, but that still doesn't make the nomenklatura innocent. They are the vultures feeding off the carcass of the Cuban nation growing fat while the people starve."5

According to Dr. Perez the statement of a Cuban exile in the audience "Brothers we cannot talk of art and culture , nor of anything until Fidel goes down" is an example of Cuban's obsession with the political to the exclusion of all else. I have attended a number of Dr. Perez's lectures and the Cuban tragedy is treated in many cases as an afterthought. To be fair I must point out that Maria Elena Cruz Varela spoke at FIU at a CRI function, but that is the exception not the rule. This would be akin to a professor of African American history concentrating on the development of jazz, blues, and literature while ignoring the effect slavery had on these artistic and cultural developments. At a time when the Cuban people are dying by the thousands on the high seas trying to flee the Cuban nightmare, Dr. Perez continues to support the foundation which made the nightmare a reality: Marxism.

Fidel Castro has sponsored imperialist wars in Africa, sponsored terrorism in Latin America, and participated in drug trafficking to poison the United States. He has the most repressive regime in the entire hemisphere, yet Professor Perez brings defacto representatives of the regime to discuss architecture. I wonder how this would play if the year were 1941 and Professor Perez, being Jewish, invited a Nazi architect to speak on his insights into Speer's architectural style and the contributions of Nazism to architecture. Dr. Perez complaining of Jews in the audience as being equal to Nazis for raising the issue of Human Rights in a setting devoted to German architecture, and thus "ruining" his lecture. Attempting to compare the exercise of free speech with that of Storm troopers is about as perverse as comparing it with rapid response brigades.

Dr Lisandro Perez's predilection for Marxian methods of analysis which in the past have proved wanting in its ability to forecast future events is troubling. Marxian analysis failed to predict the two biggest economic events of the twentieth century: the Great Depression and the collapse of Communism. The only school of economics to correctly predict both outcomes is unknown to most college graduates: The Austrian School. Its two principle intellectual giants F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises are equally obscure. Yet the double failure of Marxism and Keynesism are both still taught as proper tools of analysis in most American universities. FIU is not an exception. Nazism is still taught, but as an evil, genocidal, and failed ideology that cost tens of millions of lives. This is how Communism should also be taught.

Ironically, Dr. Perez's championing of "academic autonomy" independent of the surrounding community, is a position which he holds when the community is primarily anti-communist, but abandons when it is decidedly leftist or politically correct. A couple of years ago I watched him on a talk show supporting a group of militant Chicano students who wanted a radicalized department devoted to Chicano issues. Maria Lara, the talk show hostess, innocently asked why hadn't Cubans in FIU done something similar and Dr. Perez had to remain silent. FIU students had already picketed Dr. Perez and his co-conspirators but without success. When the Cuban community offered to fund a Cuban Studies Institute, Dr. Perez and his associates attacked it because the ideology of the student body and the surrounding community did not fit the "tradition" which Dr. Perez wishes to uphold. The continuing subversion of the Academia by the Marxist Left.

The sad part of this is that FIU and the CRI will continue to stereotype the exile community as right wing extremists. The irony is that exile groups last year spent more money backing Liberal Democrats for political office than Conservative Republicans. Florida International University has done more harm than good for the exile cause. In 1992, FIU invited militant communists from Cuba to speak at FIU and defend the Castro Regime. After this forum they went on to lecture throughout a number of American universities and spread the news on the "glorious revolution" in Cuba. When was the last time FIU sponsored a lecture series to send Cuban exiles to engage in the conversation on Cuba in other parts of the United States. Dr. Perez was upset precisely because the pro-Castro monologue was shattered by those willing to raise the banner of Human Rights.

Perhaps Cuban exiles in Miami should send President Maidique and Dr. Lisandro Perez a message Say no to bringing communists from Cuba to propagandize for Castro. Say no to paying Jesse Jackson $17,000 while he strives to tighten the embargo on Haiti but lift it in Cuba. Say no to paying thousands of dollars to communists like Stokely Carmichael to speak of the glories of international communism. Say no to bringing speakers like KRS-1 who state that he "would've gotten down with Hitler," and paying them thousands of dollars. Say no to departments that still teach Marxism as a viable theory. Its time to use the money for students not communists. Let the Ford foundation foot the whole bill for the left. On October 4th vote no on the FIU Scholarship referendum and send President Maidique a message.

Signed by,

Augusto Monge
John Suarez
FREE CUBA Foundation

1. Billingsley, K.L. and Sykes, Charles "Multicultural Mafia: An offer
you can't refuse." Heterodoxy. October 1992. Vol. 1 No. 5.

2. Amnesty International, CUBA: Silencing the Voices of
Dissent. December 1992 AMR 25/26/92.

3. Osorio Lillian, "Marxist theory studies cause anti-red ruckus."
The Beacon. December 10, 1992 Vol. 4 No. 17.

4. Clark, Juan PhD. Cuba: Exodus Living Conditions and Human
Rights (Summary of Facts and Considerations) 1992.