Published:7/7/96
Section: VIEWPOINT
Page: 3L
MERCY QUESADA, age 28, chemical engineer, is the love of his life. So is the struggle for freedom. Do not make Ramon Saul Sanchez choose.
They have no plans to marry immediately. "I could not dedicate the time to my personal life," he says. "I would like to have a normal home, but it is not possible to have a normal home right now. We will get married before too long."
He makes $300 a week doing the paperwork for a small export firm. His bonus: An understanding owner who gives him the time for his real work: freedom for Cuba.
The man known to his friends as "Saul" or "Ramoncito" will challenge Cuba next Saturday, leading a flotilla of 25-40 boats to the waters off Cuba:
He's now grown up, age 41, knowing -- better than he ever did -- why he's in this world. He finds himself busier than ever. And as poor as ever.
July 13 is the second anniversary of the Cuban government's sinking of the tugboat 13 de marzo ("13th of March"). Seeking freedom, 41 people died; 23 of those were children. It is an outrage that deserves to be remembered.
Sanchez won't reveal publicly the flotilla details. He'd love to force Fidel Castro to deploy his forces and eat up scarce Cuban government resources.
"Our purpose," Sanchez says, "is to have Castro be concerned, to bring a message of solidarity to the Cuban people, and to show that we are willing to take risks."
The legal underpinning of the flotilla's actions is the United Nations's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by both Cuba and the United States in 1948. Article 13 says that citizens have a right to leave their countries -- and return.
Sanchez wants to know: "What is the willpower of the international community to back up" that declaration? "The people of Cuba have only their willpower, their dignity, and their hope. Castro violates our rights when he says 'You can't come back here unless you think like me.' "
He comes across convincingly as he describes his intentions. "I would like to go into Cuba -- regardless of the consequences it might bring to me -- to work for democracy, to stimulate a nonviolent dissident movement within Cuba. I could do that tomorrow.
"But I am part of a broader movement. A lot of people who are going to go with us are not willing to cross into Cuban waters today. But as they participate in this dynamic, little by little they find more courage and more commitment to this method. They find the strength of their dignity. The day is coming, even if it is not on the 13th, when we will go into Cuba. It is the right to return. This is about conscience and consciousness."
There was a time when he would have proposed something
violent.
He grew up in a town called Colon in the province of Matanzas, the son of a land surveyor who, now living in Miami, is close to becoming a U.S. citizen. The boy called Saul was 12 when he came to this country in May 1967. Old enough to remember the sounds of shots and executions in the early years of the Cuban revolution.
By the time he was 17, he had dropped out of Miami Senior High, itching to do his part in liberating Cuba. His approach was Alpha 66 and other armed anti-Castro groups. He speaks of eight to 10 missions inside Cuba.
Refusing to bear witness against his compatriots, he spent 4 1/2 years in federal prison. It gave him time to think . . . and grow.
He remembers prison as "a very degrading environment for human values" but "also a place where you really get to know the true human fiber -- your own and that of others." He speaks of the strategy to free Cuba that he came to reject in prison. "We had gone down roads that we had thought would work. We were wrong. All of us grew up."
Violence came to make no sense. "It struck me as strange that an idea so beautiful as freedom had to be obtained through a means so degrading as violence . . . that in order to bring freedom to people, you had to inflict damage to other people."
Is there not, he thought, "a better method to achieve the freedom of my nation?"
Today he is in touch with many within Cuba. "The conscience of opposition on the island is growing," he says.
That is what his life is all about: Raising consciousness. Building conscience. Reading (on nonviolence, on civil rights, on Cuba, biographies of Mahatma Gandhi, Jose Marti, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). A little television (PBS and the Discovery Channel). This newspaper ("What would happen if we didn't have a newspaper with the credibility and importance of The Herald talking about these matters of freedom and conscience?").
This is a man with two suits. Both black. Two pairs of shoes. One black, one brown ("and some work boots").
And no savings. "As long as I live decently, my needs are small. My savings accounts are not of dollars, but what I can do to help people. Anywhere."
© 1996 The Miami Herald.