Through Hilda's Eyes
By FRANK CALZON
November 24, 2006
In the eyes of grandmothers, all grandchildren are loved equally. In the eyes of the political world, that is not so. Let me tell you the story about Dr. Hilda Molina, who longs to see her two grandsons, Roberto Carlos, 11, and Juan Pablo, 5, living in Buenos Aires.
A distinguished physician, Dr. Molina lives in Havana, where she founded the International Center for Neurological Restoration, a renowned neurosurgical unit. For many years, Cuba's government showered her with medals. She was a prominent member of the Communist Party and a delegate to the Cuban legislature. Today she is not allowed to leave Cuba. She is hostage of dictator Fidel Castro's political enmity.
Why the change? Dr. Molina dared to challenge the Castro government's policy of preferential treatment for foreign patients, who pay the government for their care in U.S. dollars, while the list of Cuban citizens waiting for care grows ever longer.
Dr. Molina returned her medals and resigned in protest from Cuba's Parliament and Communist Party. She is now banned from practicing medicine and lives with her ailing 82-year-old mother. Though her children and grandchildren, living in Argentina, want the two women to visit, Cuba's government refuses to issue them visas.
It is a peculiar contrast to what happened when Elian Gonzalez, the young boy rescued off the coast of Florida in the debris of a raft, became the center of an international custody battle between the Florida relatives of his mother, who died in the attempt to flee Cuba, and his father in Cuba. The legal battle over whether Elian should stay or return to Cuba provoked a public furor and was waged for months. While it was waged, Elian's father, grandmothers, and school friends were allowed to visit him in America.
Eventually, Elian returned to Cuba to become another gear in Mr. Castro's continuing anti-American propaganda machine.
Roberto Carlos and Juan Pablo benefit from no similar uproar over Mr. Castro's refusal to let their grandmother and great-grandmother visit them in Argentina. Most American pundits don't even know they exist. The New York-based National Council of Churches, so instrumental in the campaign to reunite Elian with his Cuban family, and congressmen such as New York Democrats Jose Serrano and Charles Rangel, who took to the airwaves to champion family reunions, have had little or nothing to say about Dr. Molina and her grandchildren.
Argentina's president, Nestor Kirchner, a friend of the Castro regime, tried to intercede. Dr. Molina and her mother even spent several days at the Argentine Embassy in Havana, prompting speculation in Buenos Aires that they would be given political asylum. An angry Mr. Castro then prevailed on President Kirchner to tell the women to leave. They did, and in the aftermath, the chief of staff of Argentina's foreign minister was fired to pacify the Castro regime.
Dr. Molina and her mother now live in a modest two-room apartment in Havana, not far from Revolutionary Square, the site of many speeches by Cuba's leader. Her telephone is monitored and often interrupted. Her home has been searched and her computer and various books confiscated. She is watched constantly by Mr. Castro's State Security.
Even so, she remains willing to talk with foreign reporters. In one of the few articles about her outside Florida, The New York Sun on August 10, 2006, published a piece from the Daily Telegraph by Jimmy Miller. Mr. Miller, who visited her in Havana, wrote: "she remains outcast but not downcast. 'I am free because I am a dissident' she says. 'I think freely.'"
Among other things, she continues to denounce the Castro regime's practice of encouraging Cuban women with "problem pregnancies" to get abortions. Encouraging abortion is one way the Cuban government keeps infant-mortality rates low. "At risk" babies who might require special care just aren't born, and abortions aren't included in infant-death counts.
Kim Campbell, former prime minister of Canada, French philosopher Andre Gluckman, and Branislaw Geremik, once a Polish dissident and now a member of the European Parliament, recently wrote to General Raul Castro, Cuba's acting president. They appealed to him as "a father and grandfather" to allow Dr. Molina and her mother to travel to Buenos Aires to visit their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
"Neither of them is under a judicial order that would deny them the right to travel. … Dr. Molina and her mother are ready to travel to join their family as soon as your government issues the necessary passports and exit permits," they wrote.
With Mr. Castro hospitalized and power transferred to his brother Raul, some are calling for American concessions, saying that things have changed and Raul Castro is a pragmatic man. It remains to be seen if the general's pragmatism extends to permitting two elderly women to travel to Argentina to embrace the grandchildren they long to meet and have loved from afar.
Mr. Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C.
http://www.nysun.com/article/44091
By FRANK CALZON
November 24, 2006
In the eyes of grandmothers, all grandchildren are loved equally. In the eyes of the political world, that is not so. Let me tell you the story about Dr. Hilda Molina, who longs to see her two grandsons, Roberto Carlos, 11, and Juan Pablo, 5, living in Buenos Aires.
A distinguished physician, Dr. Molina lives in Havana, where she founded the International Center for Neurological Restoration, a renowned neurosurgical unit. For many years, Cuba's government showered her with medals. She was a prominent member of the Communist Party and a delegate to the Cuban legislature. Today she is not allowed to leave Cuba. She is hostage of dictator Fidel Castro's political enmity.
Why the change? Dr. Molina dared to challenge the Castro government's policy of preferential treatment for foreign patients, who pay the government for their care in U.S. dollars, while the list of Cuban citizens waiting for care grows ever longer.
Dr. Molina returned her medals and resigned in protest from Cuba's Parliament and Communist Party. She is now banned from practicing medicine and lives with her ailing 82-year-old mother. Though her children and grandchildren, living in Argentina, want the two women to visit, Cuba's government refuses to issue them visas.
It is a peculiar contrast to what happened when Elian Gonzalez, the young boy rescued off the coast of Florida in the debris of a raft, became the center of an international custody battle between the Florida relatives of his mother, who died in the attempt to flee Cuba, and his father in Cuba. The legal battle over whether Elian should stay or return to Cuba provoked a public furor and was waged for months. While it was waged, Elian's father, grandmothers, and school friends were allowed to visit him in America.
Eventually, Elian returned to Cuba to become another gear in Mr. Castro's continuing anti-American propaganda machine.
Roberto Carlos and Juan Pablo benefit from no similar uproar over Mr. Castro's refusal to let their grandmother and great-grandmother visit them in Argentina. Most American pundits don't even know they exist. The New York-based National Council of Churches, so instrumental in the campaign to reunite Elian with his Cuban family, and congressmen such as New York Democrats Jose Serrano and Charles Rangel, who took to the airwaves to champion family reunions, have had little or nothing to say about Dr. Molina and her grandchildren.
Argentina's president, Nestor Kirchner, a friend of the Castro regime, tried to intercede. Dr. Molina and her mother even spent several days at the Argentine Embassy in Havana, prompting speculation in Buenos Aires that they would be given political asylum. An angry Mr. Castro then prevailed on President Kirchner to tell the women to leave. They did, and in the aftermath, the chief of staff of Argentina's foreign minister was fired to pacify the Castro regime.
Dr. Molina and her mother now live in a modest two-room apartment in Havana, not far from Revolutionary Square, the site of many speeches by Cuba's leader. Her telephone is monitored and often interrupted. Her home has been searched and her computer and various books confiscated. She is watched constantly by Mr. Castro's State Security.
Even so, she remains willing to talk with foreign reporters. In one of the few articles about her outside Florida, The New York Sun on August 10, 2006, published a piece from the Daily Telegraph by Jimmy Miller. Mr. Miller, who visited her in Havana, wrote: "she remains outcast but not downcast. 'I am free because I am a dissident' she says. 'I think freely.'"
Among other things, she continues to denounce the Castro regime's practice of encouraging Cuban women with "problem pregnancies" to get abortions. Encouraging abortion is one way the Cuban government keeps infant-mortality rates low. "At risk" babies who might require special care just aren't born, and abortions aren't included in infant-death counts.
Kim Campbell, former prime minister of Canada, French philosopher Andre Gluckman, and Branislaw Geremik, once a Polish dissident and now a member of the European Parliament, recently wrote to General Raul Castro, Cuba's acting president. They appealed to him as "a father and grandfather" to allow Dr. Molina and her mother to travel to Buenos Aires to visit their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
"Neither of them is under a judicial order that would deny them the right to travel. … Dr. Molina and her mother are ready to travel to join their family as soon as your government issues the necessary passports and exit permits," they wrote.
With Mr. Castro hospitalized and power transferred to his brother Raul, some are calling for American concessions, saying that things have changed and Raul Castro is a pragmatic man. It remains to be seen if the general's pragmatism extends to permitting two elderly women to travel to Argentina to embrace the grandchildren they long to meet and have loved from afar.
Mr. Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C.
http://www.nysun.com/article/44091
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