Cuban Exiles Beard Castro: Cables Ask Him to Step Aside

Carmen Trimino laughed when her friend Lourdes Garcia said she had sent an angry telegram to Fidel Castro, asking the Cuban leader to step down from office.

“He’s not going to respond to one telegram,” Trimino recalled telling Garcia. “One telegram is not going to move him.”

But the more the two Cuban-born women thought about it, the more they liked the idea. And so was born one of the more quixotic crusades aimed at ousting a world leader. The two Southern Californians set up an account with Western Union and are urging Cuban exiles across the country to send telegrams to Castro.

“We felt if we bombarded him with telegrams (and) he sees the numbers, then we would have a voice,” said Trimino, a 57-year-old businesswoman who lives in Anaheim Hills.

Sympathizers to the anti-Castro cause can call an 800 number at Western Union and, for $16, send a cablegram to Havana that asks Castro to hand over the Cuban government to the “next generation” or to hold a plebiscite.

So far, only a couple hundred cables have been sent as part of the campaign, according to Western Union officials. It is a paltry number, given the size of the Cuban exile community in the United States. In Southern California there are an estimated 60,000, while in the Miami area, headquarters of the exile community, there are 700,000 to 750,000.

Garcia and Trimino say they are confident the volume will pick up.

But do the two women believe they will be able to do what American trade embargoes, attempted invasions and the Cold War never could do? Do they think they have a chance of influencing Castro?

No.

“That is foolish even to suggest,” said Garcia, 45, a Torrance insurance broker. “The Castro government is not going to pay attention to the Cuban exile community. If Fidel has not paid attention to other presidents of the world, why would he pay any attention to us?”

But Garcia has another goal. She says she hopes that the telegram campaign will “lift the spirits of the Cuban people. We want them to know we have not forgotten them.”

The Cuban exile community has long been known for its uncompromising anti-Castro fervor, yet the notion of removing the Cuban leader from power has always been seen as a near-impossible goal.

More recently, however, with the collapse of Communist governments in Eastern Europe and the election defeat of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front, Cuban exiles have felt encouraged that the end of the 63-year-old Castro’s reign might be on the horizon. In Miami, some Cubans are even planning victory parties.

The Spanish-language telegram message that Garcia and Trimino are sponsoring says, in part: “It is time that the government of our nation democratize and that Cuba not be left behind in the process of world liberation. Let’s get to the 21st Century (as) free men and women.”

Garcia said the tone of the telegram is intentionally mild and tactful.

“It’s a respectful text,” she said. “We don’t call him ‘dictator.’ We just point out that, like (with) any senior citizen, it’s time” for Castro to move on.

The Western Union account was opened March 15 and will remain open for a month.

Western Union spokesman Don Dutcher said that as calls come in, the cables are dispatched.

“We do have cable service to Cuba, and there are no reported problems,” Dutcher said from Western Union headquarters in New Jersey. “The messages are going through.”

About 120 were sent directly through the Western Union “hot line” that was set up as part of Garcia and Trimino’s effort, while another hundred or two were sent independent of their account, according to Virginia Reese, sales manager for the Los Angeles district.

Whether Castro will ever see the cables is another question. But Reese said she received a telephone call from someone who identified himself as a Cuban government official, asking who was behind the telegram campaign.