BARACUTEY CUBANO

Honorable President Donald Trump                                                         August 20, 2018
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington DC

Dear Mr. President,

I could just send the picture above without further ado, and that would suffice in portraying this message. Yet, I must add some other very sad and personal memories about a similar situation coming to mind.

Before I arrived from my native Cuba I never experienced a sight as full of anguish and sadness as the one above.  However, I remember a young woman suffering a most likely situation. Her fiancée was arrested by the Castro police, and thrown in a dirty cell in the Isle of Pines dungeon. His crime: Just being the son of a Camagüey cattle owner, whose holdings were stolen by Castro's tyranny. Father and son ended up together in the same prison.

That young man was my friend, and at one time we were courting two young cousins from my hometown. One of them became my first wife (RIP).  While we got happily married, my friend and his sweetheart could not. His fiancée left Cuba with her parents, and since then she waited patiently in Southern Florida for her groom's release.

After twenty-one long years my friend was released from prison. Then he was allowed to leave. He reunited with his bride in Florida, and they finally were able to get married. I saw the couple in the 1980s, and was greatly pleased at their obvious happiness together. However no one lives that long inside a Castro dungeon without paying a stiff price. After a number of years of happiness in the company of his wife my friend passed away relatively young, victim of a damaged, broken heart.

I want to emphasize two important points. First, the story above is not a novel with a happy ending, but a real life tragedy. Something terrible that really happened exactly as described. I omit the names because it was a private tragedy, and should remain so. Secondly I am not trying to compare a sentence given after due process in America with the arbitrary dictate of a criminal tyrant like Castro.

I never met Mr. Arocena in person but I know some others that during the last sixty years were imprisoned in different countries, for participating in activities against tyrannical Marxist-Leninists regimes, among them of course the Castro dictatorship. Some of those activities were violent, and claimed innocent victims. I am not in the least trying to justify or forget those crimes. I also know by name many unrepentant terrorists with American blood in their hands that were pardoned by the previous administration.

I am writing this letter to beg your pardon for Mr. Eduardo Arocena. This is the very first time that I write to the President of the United States, and the very first time that -in my memory- I beg anything to another fellow man.

I could be doing it as a loyal American citizen, or as one that served faithfully and honorably in the US Army, as the father of Americans, grandfather of Americans, and great grandfather of Americans. I rather do it as a man begging to another, in the name of charity and generosity: In the name of humanity.

Arocena is old and sick. Hasn't he paid enough for his terrible fault? He does not pose a danger to anyone. He served thirty-three years as a model prisoner. Why not let him spend the rest of his life with his spouse?

I humbly beg of you, Mr. President.

Hugo J. Byrne