Cuban Airport Shootout May Mark New Round of Flight
By Theresa Bradley
May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Cuban-American groups in Miami said a deadly gun fight between Cuban police and three military deserters attempting to hijack an airplane may mark a new round of violent efforts to flee the Communist island.
``This is a very clear reflection of the frustration and desperation in Cuba at all levels,'' said Camila Gallardo, director of government relations for the Cuban-American National Foundation, the largest Cuban-American lobby.
Police today fired on three recruits who had deserted their military unit southeast of Havana last weekend, commandeering a passenger bus they rode into Havana's Jose Marti airport in an attempt to take over a Boeing 737 that had just arrived from the island's eastern city, Santiago de Cuba, Agence France-Presse reported. At least one security officer was killed.
The incident reflects growing discontent on the island as the transition to a post-Fidel Castro government portends less change than many had expected, activists and researchers said. Castro, 80, has been sidelined by intestinal surgery and complications since July 30, when he temporarily turned state control over to his brother Raul Castro.
``This isn't three young kids who decided to get in an inner tube and float to Key West; they're the rank and file of the Cuban army,'' said Jorge Pinon, a senior researcher at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, which debriefs scores of newly arrived migrants every year.
``It's an indication that if there's any kind of popular revolt in the future and Raul Castro calls on the army to stop it, we don't think they'll shoot,'' Pinon said. ``It shows you the depth of discontent within Cuba's young population.''
Cuba's government blamed the U.S. for the attempted hijacking and said it had arrested the three recruits, according to a statement obtained on the island by the Spanish newswire Efe.
Youth Discontent
More than 20 percent of Cuba's 11.4 million people were born after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ushering in a period of hardship as aid and subsidies to the former satellite nation were cut, boosting emigration and complicating Castro's ongoing ``revolution.''
At least a third of the nearly 1 million Cubans who've left the island for the U.S. since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 did so after 1990, a Pew study of U.S. Census data showed, not including more than two dozen migrants who arrived by boat this week on Miami's Key Biscayne.
Cuban emigrants on occasion commandeered planes to escape the island during the 1970s and 1980s, although the frequency of such hijackings declined when Castro's government stepped up security measures in the 1990s, Gallardo said.
The most recent hijacking was a domestic commercial flight taken over and directed to land in Key West, Florida, in 2003. That same year, Cuban officials executed three men for hijacking a ferry boat in an attempt to flee to the U.S.
'Fear and Frustration'
Pinon predicted the three military recruits, whom sources in Cuba today told him were 19 and 20 year-old men from the agricultural province Camaguay, could soon likely face a similar fate, as Cuba's transitional leadership moves to send a message to stop any pickup in emigration.
``People want a change to happen in Cuba, and since the transfer to Raul Castro they haven't seen that -- it's more of the same,'' Gallardo of the Cuban-American National Foundation said. ``There's going to be an intensification of these kinds of events as people lose their fear and frustration culminates.''
By Theresa Bradley
May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Cuban-American groups in Miami said a deadly gun fight between Cuban police and three military deserters attempting to hijack an airplane may mark a new round of violent efforts to flee the Communist island.
``This is a very clear reflection of the frustration and desperation in Cuba at all levels,'' said Camila Gallardo, director of government relations for the Cuban-American National Foundation, the largest Cuban-American lobby.
Police today fired on three recruits who had deserted their military unit southeast of Havana last weekend, commandeering a passenger bus they rode into Havana's Jose Marti airport in an attempt to take over a Boeing 737 that had just arrived from the island's eastern city, Santiago de Cuba, Agence France-Presse reported. At least one security officer was killed.
The incident reflects growing discontent on the island as the transition to a post-Fidel Castro government portends less change than many had expected, activists and researchers said. Castro, 80, has been sidelined by intestinal surgery and complications since July 30, when he temporarily turned state control over to his brother Raul Castro.
``This isn't three young kids who decided to get in an inner tube and float to Key West; they're the rank and file of the Cuban army,'' said Jorge Pinon, a senior researcher at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, which debriefs scores of newly arrived migrants every year.
``It's an indication that if there's any kind of popular revolt in the future and Raul Castro calls on the army to stop it, we don't think they'll shoot,'' Pinon said. ``It shows you the depth of discontent within Cuba's young population.''
Cuba's government blamed the U.S. for the attempted hijacking and said it had arrested the three recruits, according to a statement obtained on the island by the Spanish newswire Efe.
Youth Discontent
More than 20 percent of Cuba's 11.4 million people were born after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ushering in a period of hardship as aid and subsidies to the former satellite nation were cut, boosting emigration and complicating Castro's ongoing ``revolution.''
At least a third of the nearly 1 million Cubans who've left the island for the U.S. since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 did so after 1990, a Pew study of U.S. Census data showed, not including more than two dozen migrants who arrived by boat this week on Miami's Key Biscayne.
Cuban emigrants on occasion commandeered planes to escape the island during the 1970s and 1980s, although the frequency of such hijackings declined when Castro's government stepped up security measures in the 1990s, Gallardo said.
The most recent hijacking was a domestic commercial flight taken over and directed to land in Key West, Florida, in 2003. That same year, Cuban officials executed three men for hijacking a ferry boat in an attempt to flee to the U.S.
'Fear and Frustration'
Pinon predicted the three military recruits, whom sources in Cuba today told him were 19 and 20 year-old men from the agricultural province Camaguay, could soon likely face a similar fate, as Cuba's transitional leadership moves to send a message to stop any pickup in emigration.
``People want a change to happen in Cuba, and since the transfer to Raul Castro they haven't seen that -- it's more of the same,'' Gallardo of the Cuban-American National Foundation said. ``There's going to be an intensification of these kinds of events as people lose their fear and frustration culminates.''
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