By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Jan 19 2001 (IPS)

Cuba’s President Fidel Castro led several thousand people past the United States Interests Section in the island’s capital in the first “combatant march” this year, an event convened by student groups to protest the US law they claim led to the deaths of two Cuban adolescents who left the island hidden in an aircraft’s landing mechanism in December.

The bodies of Alberto Esteban Vázquez, 17, and Maikel Fonseca, 16, were sent from Great Britain on Wednesday, and the funerals held here Thursday, the details of which were broadcast throughout Cuba on state-run television.

The boys had taken advantage of torrential rains last Dec 24 to get past security at the Havana international airport and hide themselves in the landing gear of a British Airways aircraft just before it departed for London.

One of the bodies was found in a field near Britain’s Gatwick Airport and the other was located still inside the aircraft’s undercarriage.

The teenagers had made the mistake of hiding themselves in a space that lacks an oxygen supply and where temperatures plummet to 50 degrees below zero Celsius when the aircraft reaches an altitude of 10,000 metres. The boys also erred in choosing a plane headed for London, not the United States as they had planned.

“Down with the killer law!” shouted protesters, in reference to the Cuban Adjustment Act, which since 1966 has granted Cuban immigrants US residency one year and a day after reaching the country, regardless of whether their entry was legal or illegal.

The presence of the minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Gen. Raúl Castro, at the march underscored the importance the Cuban government places on this new chapter of its political offensive against Washington.

For security reasons, President Castro and his brother Raúl are seen together in public only on exceptional occasions.

The Defence minister marched to a unit of the Camilo Cienfuegos Military School where Vázquez and Fonseca were cadets, until they were swayed by relatives of Vázquez who had emigrated – and made a decision that would end their lives.

Schools, universities and places of employment in the Cuban capital shut down Friday so that as many people as possible could take part in the march.

Shops, cafeterias and other providers of services to the Havana population (more than 2.1 million) kept their doors closed until the end of the protest march, which lasted until midday.

“Beyond the errors, irresponsibility and naivete, Alberto and Maikel would not have tragically died in an airplane’s landing gear if the killer law did not exist that has caused the Cuban nation so many deaths,” stated the notice for the march.

The text also blamed the United States for attempting to “poison” Cuban youth with “the material paradise of the North,” which is no more than “a virtual world arriving through advertising and the media.”

“The students of Cuba denounce the empire that blockades us and tirelessly attacks us, which has no right to cause the deaths of Cuban citizens, regardless of the motivations of their attempts to emigrate illegally,” says the march announcement.

The text, published by ‘Granma’ newspaper, the mouthpiece of the governing Communist Party, was signed by the University Student Federation, the Federation of Secondary School Students and the José Martí Organisation of Pioneers.

The three organisations, which involve the vast majority of secondary, pre-university and university students in the country, identify themselves as defenders of the Cuban Revolution and followers of Castro’s philosophy.

According to the notice, those who encourage these illegal emigration attempts are the same ones who caused the death of Elizabeth Bronton, mother of Elián González, as they tried to reach the United States aboard a speedboat in November 1999.

Elián was one of three survivors of the tragic shipwreck, which claimed the lives of 11 passengers. The boy returned to Cuba with his father after a seven-month custody battle in US courts and an intensive political campaign on the island, which included numerous street marches.

Havana blames Washington for all the deaths of Cubans attempting to reach US territory through some illegal emigration bid, whether by sea, aboard an unsafe boat, or hidden in an airplane, with all the risks that method implies.

Both countries signed two migration accords, in 1994 and 1995, that commit the Cuban and US governments to encouraging “legal, orderly and safe emigration,” but Havana asserts that this goal will not be achieved as long as the Cuban Adjustment Act remains in effect.

Official US sources, meanwhile, state that if the law were revoked, Cuban immigrants would have the right to apply for political asylum in the United States and it is very likely they would obtain it because they would be coming from a socialist country.

The US border patrol estimates that more than 1,800 Cuban citizens reached the country illegally last year, representing a decline from 2,300 in 1999.

In the early 1990s, when a record 50,000 people illegally emigrated in just one year, experts estimate that one of every four people died in the attempt to reach the United States in what were generally precarious boats.

The signing of the bilateral accords and the increased presence of the US Coast Guard, which is under orders to repatriate any Cuban intercepted at sea, have forced would-be emigrants to opt for speed boats rather than some home-made raft.

The smugglers who transport Cubans the 190 kilometres from the island to the Florida keys – US territory – charge approximately 8,000 dollars per person. Analysts point out that the trip by speedboat should be much safer for those who can afford the price, or who have a relative living in exile who can pay for it.

The US Coast Guard reports that ever fewer Cubans are being intercepted at sea, and The Miami Herald has indicated that there has been a notable increase in Cubans who enter the United States by land – crossing the Mexican or Canadian borders – or by air, arriving at US airports with false passports.

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