Boxers Fled Castro Regime

Two Cuban boxers, obviously weary from three days in a federal jail cell and immigration interviews in El Centro, met the Southland media Wednesday night.

Joel Casamayor, 24, the 1992 Olympic bantamweight champion, and Ramon Garbey, 25, former light-heavyweight world champion, were released by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in El Centro Wednesday at 5 p.m. and arrived in Los Angeles on a private plane at about 8 p.m.

Through an interpreter and their lawyers, at a hastily planned news conference under a freeway overpass with aircraft thundering overhead, they sketched out years of being harassed and threatened by Cuban communists, before walking away from the Cuban Olympic team’s training camp in Guadalajara, Mexico, last week.

First question upon facing the media: Why now? Why not defect during the Olympics?

First answer, from Casamayor: “Because we would rather die than box for Fidel Castro.”

Garbey: “We don’t want to fight for Cuba. Cuba keeps the gold medal and we don’t get anything in return.”

The two boxers, looking very American in crisp, new blue-and-white sweats, told of being threatened by Communist Party officials in Cuba, and Casamayor said he’d even been “deprived of food” for refusing to sign documents committing himself to communism.

When asked if their defection is a preview of more Cuban defections at the Atlanta Olympics, they didn’t answer.

“That’s a very sensitive subject right now,” said Al Rogers, administrator for the law firm that met the two athletes in Tijuana and moved them through INS interviews there and in El Centro.

Asked if the boxers have plans to soon turn pro in the United States, their lawyer, Frank Ronzio, replied: “Their only concern now is to be accepted here, and to be free of Castro.”

Garbey: “We have no plans to [turn pro], I’m sure we’ll have different options [later].”

Ronzio said the boxers were released by the INS pending hearings on their application for political asylum.

“After one year of being granted asylum, they would be eligible for permanent residency,” he said.

He added: “We have a very, very credible asylum case which we will present to an asylum judge soon.”

Casamayor said the Cuban government traditionally grants Olympic champions cars and houses.

“I won a gold medal in 1992 but got nothing,” he said, explaining it was because he wouldn’t commit to communism.

“I don’t believe in the communist cause; I didn’t want to box for them anymore,” he said.

Rogers and Ronzio wouldn’t say exactly how the boxers traveled from Guadalajara to Tijuana, but indicated the twin defection was well planned.

“They were given transport and safe houses in Mexico,” Rogers said. “Various citizens and officials of Mexico had put their lives on the line in helping them reach Tijuana.”

Ronzio said his firm had “about three days’ notice” as to when the two would arrive in Tijuana, where they met at a hotel.

In recent years, about 15 Cuban baseball players have defected. Casamayor and Garbey are believed to be the sixth and seventh boxers to flee Cuba.

Casamayor was a champion on Cuba’s powerful 1992 Olympic team that put nine of 12 boxers into the semifinals at Barcelona and emerged with seven gold medals.

He defeated Ireland’s Wayne McCullough for the bantamweight (119 pounds) gold medal, but had moved up to the 125-pound class this year.

Garbey was the 1993 world champion at 178 pounds.