Mexico Police Find Cuban-American's Body

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Mexico Police Find Cuban-American's Body
By JORGE DOMINGUEZ
Associated Press Writer

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July 31, 2007, 3:17 PM EDT

CANCUN, Mexico -- The body of a Cuban-American who was under investigation in a migrant smuggling case was found riddled with bullets along a road outside this Caribbean resort, authorities said Tuesday.

Luis Lazaro Lara Morejon, who was wearing only white Bermuda shorts, was found handcuffed and blindfolded with duct tape late Monday night. He had been shot at least 10 times, said Didier Vazquez, the director of the judicial police in Quintana Roo state, where Cancun is located.

Vazquez said Mexican police were investigating whether Lara was part of a Cuban-American group that smuggled Cubans from southern Mexico to the United States. He said Lara was from Miami and moved a year ago to nearby Merida, the capital of Yucatan state. He was reported missing July 20.

Earlier this month, Mexican authorities outside Cancun arrested eight people -- six of whom were Cuban-Americans or Cubans with U.S. residency -- on suspicion of smuggling migrants.


Read more: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-mexico-us-slaying,0,1179049.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

[Mika]

1. A go-fast boat dropped off a load of Cubans for dollars today after a Coast Guard chase.

Unlike any other nationality, the smuggled in Cubans get to stay in the US (PLUS, they get many perks like: instant resident alien status, social security, unemployment insurance, food stamps, medicare, etc. ). Among the Cubans smuggled-in like this, there may be hardened felons, rapists, child molesters, with criminal records. None of this matters when it comes to Cubans who touch US shore. They all get to stay with a fresh new life - no record of their past - including those who were smuggled in that had previously failed a US immigration application due to a US confirmed criminal record (which would disqualify anyone who applied for a US immigration visa). Processing and release into the general population takes about 8-12 hours for Cuban migrants who were smuggled in.

The US's "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy literally offers a generous welcome mat for Cuban criminals to enter without any hassle whatsoever.

[Crunchy Frog]

2. I don't understand why Cubans need to come here from Mexico.

I mean, if all they're doing is escaping Castros political persecution, they can do that in Mexico just easily as they can in the US. If things are bad enough in Mexico to justify them getting political asylum here, then Mexicans should have comparable rights to come here.

[Mika]

3. They're not escaping Castros political persecution. They come here for the perks for Cubans only.

Its poverty that brings most immigrants here.


Except that ONLY Cuban immigrants are given the types of perks given by the US Cuban Adjustment Act. (Instant work visa, instant eligibility for a green card, instant welfare, instant Social Security, instant access to Sec 8 housing. AND THIS INCLUDES ILLEGAL ENTRANTS who are covered under the US "wet foot/ dry foot" policy for Cubans only.)


Of the tens of thousands who 'escape' Mexico hundreds of Mexicans die 'escaping' to the US.

Mexico doesn't face economically devastating US sanctions, as Cuba does.

Mexicans don't benefit from any 'Mexican Adjustment Act'


Come to Miami and you'll meet people from all over the Caribbean, from all over the Central Americas, and from all over the South Americas. They all 'escaped' too.

None of their countries face economically devastating US sanctions, as Cuba does.

None of their citizens are offered an 'Adjustment Act' like Cubans are.

But they still pour into the US.


They are escaping poverty.


The US sanctions forces poverty on Cubans in Cuba, and at the same time offers a plethora of immigration/financial perks, so the driveling propagandists can pretend that they're 'fleeing' Cuba's political system. All that's needed for that strategy to work is a totally_ignorant_about_Cuba_policy American public.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Much more often now you'll see corporate news articles refering to these Cuban immigrants as

"immigrants" rather than "defectors," "political refugees," and people "fleeing" Cuba. Sooner or later they'll ALL have to admit the truth about Cuba. Only a matter of time, right?

[Crunchy Frog]

5. Sorry, I've been away from the computer for a day and a half

on the road. Yeah, I know that most of the Cubans coming here are economic rather than political refugees. The fact that our government gives them refugee status, even when they're coming from Mexico pretty much gives the lie to the claim that they are political refugees. Well, that, and the fact that they like to take vacations in Cuba after they carry out their desperate escapes. ;)

I tend to post sarcastically when I'm trying to make a point. :)

[Bacchus39]

9. the USA offers plentiful economic opportunity

doesn't it? I thought you loved Cuba and believed it was paradise. why are people so desperate to leave?

you don't so much love the people as the system is that correct?

[Judi Lynn]

10. You're right on target, Mika. Other countries have indicated they believe the extraterritorial

aspects of the Helms-Burton Act are completely contrary to international law. Canada actually made a law which instructs Canadian citizens they are NOT to comply with the over-reaching American embargo on Cuba.

Cuba is the ONLY country which has had this form of economic warfare placed against it for over 4 decades. Cubans are being hammered economically at home due to the hard squeeze of the embargo, and the U.S. is holding out carrots in front of their faces to induce them to travel to the U.S., and get a lot of what they can get at home, as in taxpayer-provided Section 8 housing, food stamps, social security, welfare, medical treatment, etc., etc., etc. in addition to getting salaries which would make their head spin during the time they have no idea what it costs to live here!

You may remember the dismay of the two survivors who made the trip with Elián Gonzalez's group, Nivaldo Fernandez, and Arianne Horta. They were interviewed by a South Florida newspaper, I think the Miami Herald, and indicated they were simply worked to death in Miami, making only enough money to pay for their rent, going without a lot of things they were accustomed to in their old life. The man, Nivaldo, said his house in Cuba was so much better, and was really down about this place. He also despaired about the job he had, detailing cars at a dealership, when he had held a job as a chef back in Cuba.

They had saved enough to buy a few gifts to keep so they could take them to Cuba when they went to visit. (They'd better have gotten that done back right away, as after _{George W. Bush} stole the White House, he started cranking up the pressure on Cubans who wanted to return to Cuba for visits, to the point they can only go once every 3 years, and only to see immediate family. Period. No exceptions.

There are right-wingers who keep trying to throw the propaganda out about Cubans "fleeing" Cuba, while refusing to acknowledge the fact that people on ALL the islands migrate around the Caribbean all the time, as in Dominicans who go to Puerto Rico, etc. Jamaicans to the U.S., Puerto Ricans to here, etc., etc., etc.

From whom are Mexicans fleeing? They are fleeing economic hardship just like everyone else in the stricken areas. What could be easier to grasp?

Your point is well made: if the U.S. offered the same benefits to other nationalities it reserves for Cubans (a hot item, POLITICALLY) we would have been swamped so long ago, we'd have no use for a message board: we'd all be jammed in here so tightly we could simply TELL each other in person what we were thinking! I really wouldn't want to be crammed into a tight space with some of the "Democrats" who've graced this place, would you? Holy smokes. <gag> Of course, it would be great in that they couldn't escape when you start bearing down on them with the facts! :woohoo:

[Judi Lynn]

6. Gangs smuggling Cubans into US via Mexico route

Gangs smuggling Cubans into US via Mexico route

`DRY FOOT': More Cubans are taking the risky trip by boat to Mexico and then traveling on land to the US border, where they are welcomed in under US law

AP, HAVANA
Friday, Aug 03, 2007, Page 7

The vast majority of Cubans sneaking off the island now enter the US through Mexico after US relatives pay thousands of dollars to organized crime networks that scoop them off Cuba's westernmost tip in souped-up speedboats.

The Mexico route is more dangerous than a direct, 145km voyage from Cuba to Florida, but there is less chance the US Coast Guard will intervene. Nearly 90 percent of all undocumented Cubans who make it to the US now come overland rather than reaching US shores by boat, US Customs and Border Protection say.

From the Mexican coast, Cubans then travel up to the US border, where unlike other undocumented migrants, they are welcomed in under US law.

Mexico, already struggling against organized crime, is paying the price for the migration shift, especially in Cancun, the nation's glittering Caribbean getaway. On Monday, investigators there found the body of a Cuban-American from Miami, Luis Lazaro Lara Morejon, handcuffed and with duct tape over his eyes. He had been shot 10 times, obliterating his face.

Days earlier, authorities had arrested at least eight people on suspicion of smuggling Cubans to Mexico, including six Cubans with US residency or citizenship who had just been interviewed by US authorities. Lara had connections to the suspects, Mexican officials say.

More:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2007/08/03/2003372534

[Crunchy Frog]

7. Hope you posted this as a separate article.

I just want to spit nails when I read about all these Cubans coming here, with our government subsidising them with such a privilaged existance, while all other immigrants get treated like garbage.

:grr:

[Judi Lynn]

8. Thanks for pointing it out. I just did it, after seeing your suggestion.

Yep, it's a very odd arrangement, isn't it?

Especially infuriating when you know that during the time Reagan was financing death squads in Central America, and so many people were desperate to get the hell out of their way, and so many wanted to come here to escape being slaughtered in their own homelands, where hundreds of thousands perished at the hands of right-wing death squads, the Cuban radical extremists in Miami fought it tooth and nail.

They just don't want people getting the chance to flee from right-wing certain death. They insisted these people were NOT offered the same benefits they arranged for Cubans to come here. There's no political value in letting in people trying to escape right-wing monsters, after all, like their old beloved Fulgencio Batista.

You may have noticed in probably the last 6 months, the Terrible Three in Miami, the two Diaz-Balarts, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen attempted to get Congress to arrange the same deal for Venezuelans they got for Cubans. I'm sure they've got the idea of importing tons of Venezuelan domestics the wealthy ones who are here employed back home, to work at starvation wages, which we, the taxpayers can subsidize with food stamps, Section 8 housing, welfare, Social Security, government health insurance, etc., just like the Cubans get in South Florida.

Just for the fun of it, let me reiterate the story of Florida State Senator Rudy Garcia's grandmother who choses to get those damned food stamps:

Stalin Would Be Proud
And only Kafka could have dreamed up a character like Rudy Garcia
By Tristram Korten
Published: May 1, 2003

The dismissal of six workers from a local office of the Department of Children and Families is one of the most surreal governmental dramas to play itself out in some time. Certainly you recall the incident. On March 4 an aide to state Sen. Rudy Garcia was accompanying the senator's 94-year-old grandmother to the Hialeah DCF office to inquire about her food-stamp eligibility. The aide, Francis Aleman, claims she and Garcia's abuela were treated rudely. She complained to DCF brass in Tallahassee and voilà, everyone up the chain of command got the axe. Garcia happens to sit on two committees that fund and supervise DCF, and the senate is about to vote to confirm DCF Secretary Jerry Regier's permanent appointment.

Two of the fired employees had not even worked at the Hialeah office for one and a half months. They never saw, heard, or talked to the grandmother. The day they were canned they must have felt like characters in a Kafka novel, complete with self-important politicians (and their aides), obsequious bureaucrats, and a labyrinthine system so mindless that once set in motion, it couldn't be stopped.

This is as absurd as it gets. First, what the hell is the grandmother of a state senator doing on food stamps? Much less a senator who in 2001 listed his net worth as $100,212, and his income as $63,829. "She's an American citizen and she wants her independence," Garcia explained to me. "I can't tell her what to do. This is a nominal amount, around $30 a month."

Then the senator, who earns $29,328 as a legislator and derives the rest of his income from a family flooring and tile business in Hialeah, added, "We're not a rich family."

Okay, he's from working-class Hialeah. Good for him. And his grandma is stubborn, maybe a little eccentric. That's cute. But shouldn't Garcia explain to her that food stamps are for people who actually need them? And, um, he's a Republican? In fact he supported the senate's recent budget proposal, which includes deep cuts to nursing homes and would assess a fifteen-dollar payment to people who go to hospital emergency rooms for inappropriate reasons.
(snip/...)

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2003-05-01/news/stalin-would-be-proud

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who can resist remembering Florida State Rep. David Rivera's bold move to cut food stamps and medical insurance on Cubans who go back to visit Cuba?

~snip~
This week, Rivera proposed a bill for the 2005 legislative session that would penalize Floridians who travel to Cuba legally by stripping them of food stamps, state health insurance and housing assistance.

Hialeah schoolteacher Lizbet Martinez left Cuba on a raft in 1994 at age 11. She made headlines when she pulled out a violin aboard the Coast Guard cutter that rescued her family and started playing The Star Spangled Banner.

She recently went back to Cuba for the first time to visit relatives. Even so, she supports the president's greater restrictions. "We have to accept there are sacrifices for the greater good," she said.

Ninoska Perez, a radio host on one of Miami's most popular Cuban stations, said the only people protesting the changes were making money by ferrying Cuban-Americans to and from the island.

"It really has nothing to do with whether you came in 1959 or 1999," she said. "The main goal of everybody should be to end the suffering of the 12-million people in Cuba, not of your own personal family."

For Lester Palma, a 31-year-old respiratory therapist in Miami, the situation is clear: Bush's policy will help dethrone Castro, and that's why Palma will vote for Bush.

"Everyone has family over there," Palma said. "But we need to support (the measures) for the greater good. In order for the government to fall, we need to restrict Castro."

Palma talked admiringly about Bush and the evils of Cuba's communist system just before he said goodbye to his parents at the airport.

They were boarding Thursday's charter flight to Havana to visit family.
(snip/...)

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/08/27/Decision2004/Bush_s_Cuban_American.shtml



Pretty damned gross, isn't it?