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Show PEOPLE | BY FRANK KUZNIK Plea to Castro: ‘Let my family go’ A pilot’s rescue of his Cuban family drew headlines. But manyothers are left behind. ODOLFO CAMACHO, A defector from Cuba, can hear the fear i his wife’s voice everyti phones her. oa hasn‘t seen I lean their sons since December 1989, when he left Cuba on a business iri i a special investigator, who was remainfirmlyin the few remaining communist d "They're victimsofthe psycholog Cuba has not responded. Nor will it screws to Cubans who [oppose] hum, says Charlotie Ponticelli, the US. State Department's former humanrights and women’s affairs director. “It’s a quiet form of what we're seeing on discuss separated families. “No comment,” says José Bonce, Cuban mis- a larger, bloodier scale in Bosnia we plight was Lorenzo’s death-defying stunt — landing on a road in Cuba, scooping up his family and escaping to Florida. Loren- rated by Castro cannot be obtained, given the unwillingness or inability of many defectors to seek the spotight. But the number is significant We have 28 documented cases of spouses and children denied exit permits as reprisal against defectors, says Kristina Arriaga, executive director of the Valladares Foundation, an Alexandria, Va-based bumanrights organization that helped engineer the Lorenzo rescue. “If 1 announced on television I was looking for cases like this, we'd have 200 more tomorrow That still would be well short of the total, says Camacho, 52. “1 know + many people in my situation who won't speak out, because they are afraid of retaliation.” He had a good Orestes Lorenzo Perez visited i Disney World with wife Victoria, Alejandro, 6, and Reyniel, 11, after spiriting them away from Cuba. But most defectors’ families continue to suffer under Fidel Castro never returned. Since then, Ileana has spoken to him only in fleeting conversations over friends’ telephones in Havana, terrified of further reprisals from a regime that punishes defectors byeffectively holding families hostage. The plight of separated families won dramatic attention last December after another defector, Orestes Lorenzo Perez, rescued his wife and two children in a daring aerial foray. But that was a rare exception. Despite increasing speculation that Cuba’s 8 USA WEEKEND « April 30-Mey 2, 1993 xit permit procedures, priority to separated relatives ical repression Castro uses to put the An exact count of families sepa- 1 — Rodolfo Camacho nce to Cuba. Nonetheless, bg many rights violaalled for reforms that would job with a state-run company when he got off a plane during a refueling siop in Canada and asked for political asylum. Even though it meant abandoning Ileana, 33; Daniel, 8; and Dario, 4, Camachobelieves he had nochoice. “| had been openlycritical of the government. Someone tipped me off that they were going to bring espionage charges against me. What normally happens after that is you get put in prison for 30 years or are executed.” The United States granted Camacho a humanitarian visa. But attempts by his family to join him in Miami, where he now works as a photographer, have been fruitless. “My wife has visited the immigration office many times. They told her: “By punishing you, we punish your husband.’ ” The United States has protested Cuban rights violations for nearly a decade. Last year, the United Nations sion spokesmanin Washington, D.C vent that =stallized the zo had _— more than a year work- ing with the Valladares Foundationto publicize his predicament. He gave speeches, eanied to rights groups. mounted a postcard campaign, wrote to members of Congress and foreign jeaders, and even went on a hunger strike. “] never lost hope that Castro would release m y family . [had made a ee to my wife, though: ‘If in a ear you are not released, I will be cok for you.” It was a chance im a milhon, but I had to keep my promise.” Lorenzo also founded Parents for Freedom, a lobbying and support group for people like himself and Camacho, who was among the first io join. “Westarted the organization to tel] the world what is going on,” Lorenzo says. “Public opinion is the only way we can pul pressure” on Castro. Camacho realizes his public posture could backfire, causing further reprisals. But such risks, says the Valladares Foundation’s Arriaga, are 2 measure of defectors’ desperation. “Ii something had gone wrong with the Lorenzo rescue, it would have meant certain death for every member oi that family,” she says. “This is the exient to which a family has to go to [reunite]. It’s life together or death.” Given the terrible costs, why do people defect? Camacho doesn’t hesi- late to answer. “It is very painful being separated from myfamily. Yet I prefer to go abroad and be separated from them for — I don’t know ... five, 10, 15 years — to prepare a future for my sons. There is no future in Cuba.” & PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM SALYER |