Cubans in 2001 were not allowed to easily travel outside of the island. Fidel Castro gave the authorization for the minor to travel with Maradona. According to Mavys Álvarez, “the only way to travel was either with the permission of the parents, being at least 18 years old, or through Fidel. Maradona was able to get the authorization and she traveled out of the country in November 2001.
Diego Maradona, an international soccer legend, and enthusiastic supporter of the Castro dictatorship, could still have been targeted by the Castro regime with compromising photos to gain leverage over the sports celebrity.
Mavys Alvarez (then 16), Fidel Castro, and Diego Maradona (then 40) in 2001
The Cuban government’s intelligence service has a history of carrying out “kompromat”, called “honey traps” in English. “Kompromat” is “the Russian art of obtaining compromising material on prominent individuals in order to exert leverage over them,” according to The Conversation. The Cuban intelligence service was formed, and trained by both the East German Stasi and the Soviet KGB, and have their own extensive history on this tactic.
British authorities had been aware of these practices and even after the Cold War in 1990 listed Cuba among “countries presenting a special security risk”, and among dangers cited “sexual involvement”, another term for “honey trap.” To achieve additional leverage the use of underage girls or boys (that do not appear underage) could be used to add a criminal element to extortion used by Havana. That Fidel Castro invited Jeffrey Epstein to Cuba in 2003 should raise concerns about what information the two could have traded in, and who would be further compromised.
There are also worrying episodes with Cuban doctors, and individuals who pose as doctors, but are part of the espionage apparatus.
The Cuban dictatorship and its agents of influence would prefer that George Orwell’s “memory holes” were a reality and not a literary fiction. In the midst of their continuing propaganda campaign to celebrate the Cuban medical missions sent abroad for profit and whitewashing the Castro regime’s many crimes, the March 17, 2019 article by Nicholas Casey in The New York Times, “‘It Is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Venezuela Voters” reveals how Cuban doctors on orders from their ideologically committed higher ups were ordered to provide patients needed medical treatment conditioned upon and in in exchange for their political loyalty. It also revealed that not all the folks dressed like doctors were doctors but just playing the role.
Even United Nations experts have called out the Cuban government for some of these practices.
Similar to the Cuban doctors, the shipyard workers upon their transfer to Curacao had their passports seized, and were monitored by state security and held against their will.
“The men were forced to labor in sweltering weather and dangerous conditions, like hanging from scaffolds. When Rodríguez broke his foot and ankle in 2002 while scraping rust from the hull of a ship, he was sent home to heal — and then ordered back after his recovery. […] Plaintiff Luis Alberto Casanova once suffered an electric shock but was forced to finish his shift despite bleeding from his tongue. The workers’ supervisors were other Cubans, including a nephew of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the suit alleges. ”They always told us if we didn’t work, they’d throw us out of the country, fire us and send us to jail,” Rodríguez said. “Really, we were slaves. We didn’t have a voice or a vote.”
The Miami Herald continued to follow the story and reported on it in 2008.The trio were awarded US$50 million as compensation and US$30 million as punitive damages in 2008, in a default judgment, and the appeals process has continued over the next 12 years. On May 27, 2015 the Curacao Chronicle, in the article “Slave labor victims of Curaçao Dry Dock get nod enforce $67million USA claim” reported that “the quest by three modern-day slaves for US$80 million in restitution has come to the Singapore port of call. Three Cuban slave-labor victims were given the High Court’s go-ahead to enforce a US$50 million claim won in a United States court against any assets that the Curaçao dry dock has in Singapore. The High Court rejected the bid by Curaçao Drydock Company to set aside the US judgment, making clear the claims were enforceable in Singapore as they were meant to compensate the victims, not punish the company.”
Alberto J Rodríguez, Fernando A Hernández and Luis A Casanova Toledo
State Department, February 25, 2025
Expansion of Visa Restrictions Policy for Individuals Exploiting Cuban Labor
Today, we announce the expansion of an existing Cuba-related visa restriction policy that targets forced labor linked to the Cuban labor export program. This expanded policy applies to current or former Cuban government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labor export program, particularly Cuba’s overseas medical missions. This policy also applies to the immediate family of such persons. The Department has already taken steps to impose visa restrictions on several individuals, including Venezuelans, under this expanded policy.
Cuba continues to profit from the forced labor of its workers and the regime’s abusive and coercive labor practices are well documented. Cuba’s labor export programs, which include the medical missions, enrich the Cuban regime, and in the case of Cuba’s overseas medical missions, deprive ordinary Cubans of the medical care they desperately need in their home country. The United States is committed to countering forced labor practices around the globe. To do so, we must promote accountability not just for Cuban officials responsible for these policies, but also those complicit in the exploitation and forced labor of Cuban workers.
This visa restriction policy is taken pursuant to Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
https://www.state.gov/expansion-of-visa-restrictions-policy-for-individuals-exploiting-cuban-labor/
FROM THE ARCHIVES
The Independent, October 11, 2021
Video adds weight to claim Maradona ‘trafficked’ 16-year-old girl and kept her at hotel
Mavys Alvarez is listed as plaintiff on case filed with Argentina’s Office of Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons
New video has surfaced adding weight to claims by a woman that football legend Maradona seduced her when she was 16, gave her drugs and kept her locked in a hotel.
Mavys Alvarez also claims that she was forced to get breast implants after being groomed and flown to Argentina from her native Cuba by Maradona’s associates, without the permission of her parents.
The video, obtained by Spanish-language news outlet Infobae, came to light amid a human trafficking case against Maradona’s associates who Ms Alvarez says introduced her to the football icon in 2000 when she was 16 years old and he was 40.
In one part of the video, she looks visibly uncomfortable as Maradona films her, in others she sings karaoke and smiles, and in another, the pair are on a bed together while commentary from a football match plays in the background. Various associates of Maradona’s also appear at times in the video.
Considered a hero in Argentina and one of the greatest footballers of all time, Maradona was in Cuba for a drug rehabilitation course when he met Ms Alvarez at his hotel in the resort town of Varadero, The Daily Telegraph reports.
The Wall Street Journal, December 25, 2019
Communist Cuba Enslaves Physicians
Havana sends them abroad, steals their wages, and forces them to act as spies.
By Marion Smith
What do you call a system that combines slavery with espionage? In Communist Cuba, you call it humanitarian aid. For decades Havana has sent tens of thousands of doctors abroad as a supposed sign of goodwill, only to steal their income and use some as unwilling spies. Fortunately, more nations are rejecting Cuba’s “help.”
After toppling socialist dictator Evo Morales in November, Bolivia expelled more than 700 Cuban doctors, accusing them of fomenting protests demanding Mr. Morales’s return to power. Ecuador moved to evict the 400 or so Cuban doctors within its borders a few days earlier. One doctor said she and her colleagues received only a third of their promised salaries, with Havana keeping the rest. She also said Cuban authorities forced them to “send messages of support to the revolution.”
In late 2018, incoming Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro demanded that Cuba allow the more than 8,500 doctors in his country to bring their families and collect their full salary, which was paid for by Brazilian taxpayers. Havana soon recalled the doctors. A year before, at least 150 Cuban doctors in Brazil filed lawsuits detailing their mistreatment. One said, “There comes a time when you get tired of being a slave.”
More than 60 nations still participate in Cuba’s doctor program, with official and unofficial estimates ranging from 29,000 to 50,000 “health professionals” across Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific and elsewhere.
It’s unknown how many doctors are tasked with espionage, but it is evident how much money they make Havana. Most host countries pay Cuba directly, giving the Communist nation some $11 billion annually. The regime takes an average of 75% of their promised salaries, rising to 90% or more in wealthier nations. In some cases, international bodies like the Pan-American Health Organization abet this theft by brokering Cuba’s deals.
Not all countries pay Havana in cash; Venezuela pays with oil. Cuban doctors there reported being forced to withhold critical medical care until close to the 2018 presidential election, so that Nicolás Maduro’s regime could take credit. Others went to poor communities and warned that medicine would be cut off if Mr. Maduro or his allies lost.
The doctors are coerced into silence. Havana effectively treats their families as hostages. That so many are speaking out anyway shows how much they resent their inhumane and immoral treatment.
The Trump administration should persistently and loudly urge other nations to follow the example of Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil and end their participation in the communist slave-trade spy ring. The U.S. should also re-establish the Cuban Medical Parole program, which President Obama ended as he left office. It allowed Cuban doctors who defect to obtain U.S. visas quickly, weakening the oppressive regime while giving doctors a fast track to freedom.
The dissident doctors’ bravery should inspire the rest of us to action. Cuba’s flagship humanitarian aid program is dangerous, dehumanizing and downright evil, and it demands to be stopped.
Mr. Smith is executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
The New York Times, March 17, 2019
‘It Is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Venezuela Voters
By Nicholas Casey
Yansnier Arias knew it was wrong. It violated the Constitution, not to mention the oath he took as a doctor in Cuba.
He had been sent to Venezuela by the Cuban government, one of thousands of doctors deployed to shore up ties between the two allies and alleviate Venezuela’s collapsing medical system.
But with President Nicolás Maduro’s re-election on the line, not everyone was allowed to be treated, Dr. Arias said.
A 65-year-old patient with heart failure entered his clinic — and urgently needed oxygen, he said. The tanks sat in another room at the ready, he recalled.
But he said his Cuban and Venezuelan superiors told him to use the oxygen as a political weapon instead: Not for medical emergencies that day, but to be doled out closer to the election, part of a national strategy to compel patients to vote for the government.
May 20, 2018, was nearing, he said, and the message was clear: Mr. Maduro needed to win, at any cost.
“There was oxygen, but they didn’t let me use it,” said Dr. Arias, who defected from the Cuban government’s medical program late last year and now lives in Chile. “We had to leave it for the election.”
To maintain their hold over Venezuela, Mr. Maduro and his supporters have often used the nation’s economic collapse to their advantage, dangling food before hungry voters, promising extra subsidies if he won, and demanding that people present identification cards tied to government rations when they came to the polls.
But participants in the schemes say Mr. Maduro and his supporters have deployed another tool as well: Cuba’s international medical corps.
In interviews, 16 members of Cuba’s medical missions to Venezuela — a signature element of relations between the two countries — described a system of deliberate political manipulation in which their services were wielded to secure votes for the governing Socialist Party, often through coercion.
Many tactics were used, they said, from simple reminders to vote for the government to denying treatment for opposition supporters with life-threatening ailments.
The Cuban doctors said they were ordered to go door-to-door in impoverished neighborhoods, offering medicine and warning residents that they would be cut off from medical services if they did not vote for Mr. Maduro or his candidates.
Many said their superiors directed them to issue the same threats during closed-door consultations with patients seeking treatment for chronic diseases.
One former Cuban supervisor said that she and other foreign medical workers were given counterfeit identification cards to vote in an election. Another doctor said she and others were told to give precise voting instructions to elderly patients, whose infirmities made them particularly easy to manipulate.
“These are the kinds of things you should never do in your life,” said the doctor. Like several others, she spoke on the condition of anonymity because she and her relatives could face retaliation by the Cuban or Venezuelan authorities.
The accounts of manipulation and fraud underscore the many challenges to Mr. Maduro’s legitimacy as president. After the start of his second term in January, the opposition-controlled legislature declared its leader, Juan Guaidó, the country’s rightful president, calling the election undemocratic.
More than 50 countries, including the United States, now recognize Mr. Guaidó as Venezuela’s president, though Mr. Maduro still holds the reins of power.
Mr. Maduro’s opponents often accuse Cuba — which has long depended on oil from Venezuela — of propping up his embattled government by sending agents to work with Venezuela’s intelligence agencies, helping its ideological ally crush dissent.
But the use of Cuban doctors to exert political control is not widely known, the doctors say, and the practice casts a harsh light on a sweeping exchange that supposedly benefits all Venezuelans, regardless of their politics.
The Venezuelan government did not respond to questions, while the Cuban government noted that, for decades, its doctors have been celebrated for their medical missions across the globe, fighting Ebola in Africa, blindness in Latin America and cholera in Haiti, to name a few.
It rejected the doctors’ assertions that they had been dragged into campaigns and pressured to manipulate or threaten patients for political ends in Venezuela, citing the “honorable task” they have accomplished.
“The historical impact of that cooperation in Venezuela has been reflected in the 1,473,117 human lives that have been saved,” the government said.
But human rights experts point to the special pact between Cuba and Venezuela over the last two decades.
“The Cuban government wants to make sure the Venezuelan regime survives and is willing to do anything in their power to support Maduro,” said José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas program at Human Rights Watch. “It is unspeakable.”
‘A form of blackmail’
Dr. Carlos Ramírez loved the work.
A dental surgeon, he left Cuba and came to Venezuela, proud of the cause. Many of his patients had never seen a dentist before, he said.
But he despised one part of his job: Each weekend, he and other medical workers were told to hand out medicine and enlist voters for Venezuela’s Socialist Party, he said. The visits were so routine they had a name — “casa-a-casa,” or house-to-house.
“You arrived with vitamins and some pills for blood pressure” or the like, said Dr. Ramírez, who defected to Ecuador after six years. “And when you started to gain their trust, you started the questions: ‘Do you know where your voting place is? Are you going to vote?’ ”
All 16 of the Cuban medical personnel interviewed confirmed the house-to-house visits mixing medicine and politics.
They were part of Barrio Adentro, a program set up by former President Hugo Chávez in 2003 to bring medicine to poor neighborhoods in Venezuela. Under a new Constitution passed in 1999, health care was a universal right. Shifting the nation’s focus to the poor, Mr. Chávez turned to Cuba for medical personnel.
Cuba, still reeling from the collapse of its former patron, the Soviet Union, had much to gain. Doctors are the island’s most profitable export, with medical missions in more than 60 countries that provide Cuba with an estimated $8 billion in cash. Venezuela paid for its doctors in a precious resource: oil.
Mr. Chávez was beloved by many Venezuelans. So in the early years, Dr. Ramírez and other doctors said they were mainly instructed to remind voters that Mr. Chávez had provided the medicine — and should be thanked with their votes.
Dr. Carlos Ramírez, a Cuban dental surgeon. Credit Cristobal Corral for The New York Times
But in 2013, after battling cancer, Mr. Chávez died. His handpicked successor, Mr. Maduro, was not nearly as popular and faced a strong challenge from the opposition.
Dr. Ramírez and other doctors say they were then told to deliver a warning: If Mr. Maduro lost the election, the next government would break ties with Cuba and Venezuelans would lose their medical care.
“With Chavez it had been hard, but with Maduro, starting in 2013, it was worse,” another Cuban doctor said. “It became a form of blackmail: ‘You’re not going to have medicine. You’re not going to have free health care. You’re not going to have prenatal care if you’re a pregnant woman.’ ”
Four of the Cuban medical workers said the government established “electoral command centers” inside or next to clinics, with Socialist Party operatives dispatching doctors to pressure residents.
One added that, on the day Mr. Maduro was elected to his first term, she witnessed officials opening ballot boxes and tampering with votes, including destroying ballots that chose the opposition. Another said she and others were asked to vote with false identification.
On April 14, 2013, officials declared Mr. Maduro the winner with 50.6 percent of the vote, one of the narrowest margins in years.
“I asked myself, ‘Why is a physician, someone who is meant to be on a humanitarian mission, having a part in who wins an election?’” said one of the doctors. “This is called tampering. There is no other word for it.”
Fake doctors dispensing medicine
By 2015, the headwinds facing Mr. Maduro had grown. Oil prices and production were dropping. The shortages of basic goods had begun. The opposition was seeking control of the legislature, and appeared headed for victory.
“Because the opposition was favored to win, they gave us the work of buying votes,” said Raúl Manuel, a Cuban doctor now in Brazil. “Buying votes in what sense? Going out with medicine.”
Dr. Manuel said he was sent to Barinas, the state where Mr. Chávez was born. But it had begun to turn against the Socialist Party, and resentment against Cuban doctors was building for their pact with the government.
When Dr. Manuel did his required house-to-house visits, some residents unleashed dogs or came to the door armed, he and other doctors said.
On Election Day, Dr. Manuel said he was sent to an opposition stronghold. When early returns showed the opposition ahead, a gun battle broke out. Dr. Manuel said he found himself trapped on a cul-de-sac as bullets ricocheted around him.
He called his clinic for help, he said, but it was busy sending out doctors to get voters to the polls.
“They said they had no cars to rescue us,” he said.
After the shootout, Dr. Manuel said he returned to the clinic, shaken, only to learn that government officials from other departments — including the sports and culture agencies — were going out, too, posing as doctors.
“We, the doctors, were asked to give our extra robes to people,” he said.
The fake doctors were even giving out medicines, without knowing what they were or how to use them, he added.
“They were putting the lives of so many people at risk, the lives of children, all to win votes,” Dr. Manuel said.
Pro-opposition demonstrators in Caracas this month. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Pro-opposition demonstrators in Caracas this month. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Another Cuban doctor in Barinas offered the same account: that government employees, dressed as physicians, were sent out with medicine to get votes.
When the final tally came in, Mr. Maduro’s party had been trounced nationally, losing its majority in the legislature for the first time since 1999.
‘How they controlled people’
By the time Dr. Arias arrived in late 2016, Venezuela was suffering a grinding collapse.
The economic implosion had led to chronic shortages of food. Inflation had hit so hard that people paid with stacks of bills, counted at cash registers with electric bill counters. Crimes and killings soared.
And then there were the hospitals. Vital medicines couldn’t be imported because the government had little cash. Water cuts meant surgeons used bottled water to clean their hands, without soap, which was also in short supply.
Doling out the little medicine that remained, the doctors now focused their vote-getting efforts on patients with chronic illnesses, who needed repeated attention, Dr. Arias said.
“The theme was chronic illnesses, the ones where you would die if patients didn’t get medicine, and that’s how they controlled people,” Dr. Arias recalled.
Mr. Maduro was fighting for control himself. Protests swept the capital for months, setting off a government crackdown in which more than 100 people died in street battles.
After receiving death threats from patients, Dr. Arias said he was sent to a fishing town, La Vela del Coro, where food shortages led doctors and nurses to steal medicine and trade it for groceries.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” he said, recounting how a Cuban nurse traded antibiotics for “a kilo of potatoes, a kilo of yams.”
Residents of La Vela confirmed that both Cuban and Venezuelan doctors regularly bartered medicine for goods on the black market.
In mid-2017, Mr. Maduro made a bid to consolidate power: a referendum for a second legislature to replace the opposition-controlled National Assembly.
Calling the vote illegal, the opposition refused to participate, so the slate of candidates was composed entirely of figures loyal to the president.
The new legislature quickly sidelined the National Assembly, embarking on an aggressive agenda to silence Mr. Maduro’s critics.
The government pushed a contentious identification system called the “homeland card,” used by the Socialist Party for both food subsidies and voting. Mr. Maduro urged citizens to get the card to receive groceries, and party officials opened kiosks outside polling places to review the cards after people cast their ballots.
Dr. Arias said that doctors’ house-to-house visits started registering people for the cards. But the cards terrified many Venezuelans, who feared the government would see how they voted and restrict their food in retaliation.
Before an election for governors that year, Mr. Arias recalled an epileptic patient in the hospital who needed treatment but had refused the homeland card.
“‘I don’t want anything to do with this homeland! I don’t want anything to do with Maduro!’” he recalled her shouting. She was sent away without medication, he said, “because she was from the opposition.”
As the returns came in, Mr. Maduro’s party claimed a lopsided victory, taking 17 of the 23 governorships, despite polls that had projected losses.
“Today, the homeland has gotten stronger,” Mr. Maduro said that night.
‘I argued with my colleagues’
In 2018, it was Mr. Maduro’s turn to face voters.
Measures were taken to ensure his victory. One challenger, Leopoldo López, was dragged between house arrest and a military prison. Another, Henrique Capriles, was banned from running, along with most opposition parties.
As shortages worsened, Mr. Maduro promised hefty subsidies to those using the homeland card, saying openly: “I give, you give.”
But his government withheld other essentials.
Dr. Arias said medical supplies, always scarce in La Vela, soon disappeared, hoarded until the May election. He said his superiors wanted to flood hospitals with supplies right before the vote, giving the impression that Mr. Maduro had fixed the country’s shortages.
“When the elections came, everything appeared: medicine, gas, dressings for bandages, injection serums,” he said. Residents in La Vela who had gone to the clinic confirmed it was suddenly supplied before the election.
The case of the oxygen tanks still weighs heavily on Dr. Arias.
“I argued with my colleagues over and over,” he said. “Yes, of course there was oxygen, but they didn’t let me use it.”
Ángel Villegas, La Vela’s opposition mayor, said he was denied medication, too, told that it was in short supply.
“There are a large number of services where you feel that, yes, they took into consideration the fact that you were in the opposition,” he said.
As Election Day neared, the doctors continued to fan out in support of Mr. Maduro.
“They come to your house, they ask you a series of questions, and you start to think, if I answer ‘no,’ they can cut me from health care,” said one patient, who declined to be named, fearing government reprisals. “It just leaves you overwhelmed.”
On May 20, Mr. Maduro was declared the winner, landing him a second term. For Dr. Arias, it was too much.
He made his way to Chile, taking shelter in a church, cleaning floors in a hospital and seeking asylum, unable to find work as a doctor.
“If I can’t be a doctor, I at least want to be a person,” he said.
It’s unclear how many other doctors have abandoned Cuba’s medical missions around the world — informal estimates are in the thousands — but the consequences are stark. Dr. Arias and the others are considered deserters by the Cuban government and cannot return to their families.
Dr. Ramírez, the dental surgeon, is one of the few doctors interviewed who has returned to medicine, with a small practice in Ecuador.
“You don’t finally realize what is right, until you open your eyes,” he said.
Andrea Zarate contributed reporting from Lima, Peru.
A version of this article appears in print on March 17, 2019, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trading Lifesaving Treatment for Maduro Votes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/17/world/americas/venezuela-cuban-doctors.html
Curacao Chronicle, May 27, 2015
Slave labor victims of Curaçao Dry Dock get nod enforce $67million USA claim
WILLEMSTAD – The quest by three modern-day slaves for US$80 million in restitution has come to the Singapore port of call. Three Cuban slave-labor victims were given the High Court’s go-ahead to enforce a US$50 million claim won in a United States court against any assets that the Curaçao dry dock has in Singapore.
The High Court rejected the bid by Curaçao Drydock Company to set aside the US judgment, making clear the claims were enforceable in Singapore as they were meant to compensate the victims, not punish the company.
“There is no purpose in setting aside a judgment if there is not going to be something to be gained by having a trial,” said Justice Lee Seiu Kin in judgment grounds released yesterday.
He clarified that a foreign judgment may be given effect under the common law if it satisfied the legal requirements of the court in Singapore.
The judge dismissed Curaçao Drydock’s appeal against an assistant registrar’s decision last year, thus rejecting its move to set aside the judgment.
The court enforcement order allows the Cubans to garnish, or seize, any monies owed by Singapore firms to Curaçao Drydock.
Singapore-registered ships, for instance, may owe Curaçao Drydock money after using its shipyard services, and these debts could be legally seized to settle the judgment sum.
Mr Alberto Licea (49); Mr Fernando Henandez (49); and Mr Luis Toledo (37), all ship construction technicians, were made to work 16-hour shifts in harsh conditions, doing demanding and dangerous tasks on ships and oil platforms for up to 15 days straight.
They were found to have suffered significant physical injuries which led to psychological damage while working for Curaçao Drydock.
They had been forced to travel and work there by the Cuban government as part of a scheme to pay off the country’s debts. The men escaped and went to Colombia in 2005 before they were allowed to enter the U.S.
When they sued the firm in the U.S. in 2007, Curaçao Drydock tried to have the case heard in Curaçao but failed. It abandoned its defense and lost the suit by default.
Miami federal district judge James King awarded the trio US$50 million as compensation and US$30 million as punitive damages in 2008, in a default judgment.
The US judge noted that they had suffered a harrowing experience, “in effect serving a hard-labour prison sentence with no end in a foreign land”.
Judge King added that Curaçao Drydock conspired with Cuba to force its citizens to travel and work there.
In Singapore, the three victims, through their lawyer, Mr. Sim Chong, sought to enforce the US$50 million judgment awarded for compensation and not the additional US$30 million in punitive damages. The latter is not recognized in Singapore, as argued by defense lawyer Syn Kok Kay.
It is understood that the three men, now based in Florida, have some way to go in their efforts to recover all the sums due to them.
Last December, through a court order they garnished US$82,618 owed by KGJ Cement (Singapore) to Curaçao Drydock, which KGJ handed to their lawyer.
According to a US report earlier this month, a Texas district court had late last year ordered US$2.6 million garnished from Liberia-based Formusa Brick Marine Corp, which owed the debt to Curaçao Drydock.
The issue is the subject of appeal.
The Miami Herald, July 17, 2008
Cuba paid debts with forced labor, lawsuit says
BY FRANCES ROBLES
Each Cuban worker got two pairs of overalls, a set of sturdy boots, a helmet and food commensurate with how hard he worked.
Their labor fixing up American cruise ships at a Curacao dry dock was valued at $6.90 an hour. But the 108 Cuban shipyard hands who worked double shifts in a joint venture between the Cuban government and the Curacao Dry Dock Company did not get to spend their wages. Their earnings were applied to the Cuban government’s debt with the company, court records show.
Documents reviewed Wednesday by The Miami Herald in an ongoing 2006 lawsuit filed in Miami by the workers offer a rare glimpse at employment terms normally kept secret between the Cuban government and the firms with which it does business. The documents appear to offer proof that the government’s joint ventures abroad sometimes involve unpaid labor.
Instead of a salary, the men got money for food and 400 Cuban pesos a month — about $18 at the current exchange rate.
Three former dry-dock workers eventually escaped what their attorneys call a ”forced labor camp” in Willemstad, Curacao, and filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Miami, alleging the Cuban government offered them up as slave labor to pay off its debts.
Alberto Justo Rodríguez, Fernando Alonso Hernández and Luis Alberto Casanova Toledo — who now live in the Tampa Bay area — sued the Curacao Dry Dock Company, saying it forced them to work against their will while Cuban agents kept an eye on their every move.
Their boss at the docks: Fidel Castro’s nephew.
In court papers, the Curacao Dry Dock Company says allegations it forced employees to work 112 hours a week in substandard conditions are untrue. In a sweeping denial of wrongdoing, the company acknowledged it did not pay the Cubans and that managers held the workers’ passports “for safekeeping.”
”Because of the significant debt owed by . . . Havana to defendant for repairing ships . . . monies that defendant would otherwise pay to the Havana shipyard for the provision of temporary workers from Cuba are subtracted from the debt owed by the shipyard,” the company’s attorneys wrote in a court filing.
The suit was filed under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreigners to file civil suits in U.S. federal courts when a serious international law has been violated. It was unclear how much the Cuban government owed the company.
The court filing responding to the lawsuit added that the workers got a per diem and ”additional benefits.” Employment contracts show the men were supposed to receive $1,500 a month for a per diem, but the workers say they received only a $12 daily food allotment to spend at the company store.
Court documents also show that the dock’s production manager was Manuel de Jesus Bequer Soto Del Valle, the nephew of Fidel Castro’s wife, Dalia Soto Del Valle. The records show Bequer’s employment ended in April 2007 and he later sued the company.
Without detailing the cause of his lawsuit, the records show the company settled for $125,000.
Asked what Bequer was like, plaintiff Alonso Hernández said through his Miami attorney, Orlando do Campo: “Manuel Bequer was a despot — a Nazi. He had no regard for our health or well-being and personally put me in dangerous and hazardous situations. His only concern was to exploit the Cuban laborers to the fullest extent possible.”
The men said they worked 3 p.m. to 7 a.m. shifts 15 days in a row. They got days off only when the docks were empty, attorney John Andres Thornton said.
In the suit, attorneys allege that the Cuban government and the Curacao Dry Dock company formed the joint venture to repair ships as a way to skirt the U.S. trade embargo against the communist nation.
Now Thornton said the Cuban government has enacted revenge on the plaintiffs’ families — who are still on the island — by refusing their children access to day care and higher education.
The Curacao Dry Dock Company did not show up for depositions scheduled in Miami last week, and its Boca Raton attorneys want off the case. At a hearing Wednesday before U.S. District Judge James L. King, attorney Stephanie Traband asked the court to allow her Boca Raton firm, Proskauer Rose, to be removed from the case, citing irreconcilable differences.
The workers’ attorneys assert Curacao Dry Doce is trying to dodge the case — and a financial judgment against the firm — by not cooperating in the suit.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/human-rights/curacao.htm
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24491479.html
The Miami Herald, October 28, 2006
Cuba accused of slavelike labor deal
Cuban shipyard workers say they were forced to work as modern slaves at a Curacao ship repair company
By Frances Robles. frobles@MiamiHerald.com.
The Cuban government conspired with a Curacao ship repair company to provide practically slave labor fixing up vessels, including Miami-based cruise ships, and kept workers under harsh conditions, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District court in Miami alleges.
The civil suit filed before Judge James Lawrence King alleges that up to 100 Cuban shipyard workers are forced to work against their will at Curacao Drydock Co., a ship repair company with an agent in Delray Beach, Klattenberg Marine Associates.
The suit, filed by three workers who escaped and now live in Florida, alleges they were ordered to work 16-hour shifts for $16 a month, a low wage common in their native Cuba.
”We started work at 3 in the afternoon and kept working until 7 a.m. the following day,” plaintiff Alberto Justo Rodríguez told The Miami Herald. “We worked in the worst, most uncomfortable parts of the ship. Where nobody wanted to go — that’s where they sent the Cubans.”
112 HOURS A WEEK
According to the suit, the men often worked 112 hours a week.
Their wage amounted to 3 ½ cents an hour.
The suit was filed two months ago and was first reported Friday by The Associated Press.
Rodríguez, a former shipyard worker in Cuba, was summoned to the Ministry of Transportation in 2001 for a mandatory transfer to Curacao. Upon arrival on the Caribbean island, he says, his passport was seized.
He and up to 100 other Cubans worked on a joint venture with the Cuban government and Curacao Drydock, a company that does shipyard repair, including work for U.S.-based cruise lines, oil companies and shipping firms.
The joint venture between the Cuban government and Curacao Drydock has Cuba providing the workers for the company, providing a source of cash for the Cuban government, the suit alleges.
Curacao Drydock, the suit alleges, knew the Cuban workers were being held against their will.
A written statement provided by Curacao Drydock attorney Matt Triggs to The Miami Herald says many of the suit’s allegations are directed at the Cuban government.
”There are allegations, however, regarding the health and safety of our employees that are of great concern to Curacao Drydock Co.,” the statement said, stressing that the company has safety measures in place. “Nevertheless, the company is undertaking a full investigation of the allegations.”
The suit claims the men were forced to labor in sweltering weather and dangerous conditions, like hanging from scaffolds. When Rodríguez broke his foot and ankle in 2002 while scraping rust from the hull of a ship, he was sent home to heal — and then ordered back after his recovery.
The suit claims plaintiff Luis Alberto Casanova once suffered an electric shock but was forced to finish his shift despite bleeding from his tongue.
The workers’ supervisors were other Cubans, including a nephew of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the suit alleges.
”They always told us if we didn’t work, they’d throw us out of the country, fire us and send us to jail,” Rodríguez said. “Really, we were slaves. We didn’t have a voice or a vote.”
FORCED VIEWING
On time off, Rodríguez said, they were forced to watch videos of political speeches, marches and the Cuban government Mesa Redonda — Round Table — TV news shows. He escaped in 2004 and now works odd jobs in Hialeah.
The suit was filed by Miami Beach lawyer John Andres Thornton under the Aliens Tort Act, which allows foreigners to file civil suits in U.S. federal courts when an international law has been violated.
Curacao Drydock has asked the judge to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction.
The suit seeks unspecified damages. No trial date has been set.
Co-plaintiffs Fernando Alonso Hernández worked in Curacao from 1995 until he fled in January 2005. He and the third plaintiff, Luis Alberto Casanova, who worked in Curacao from 2002 until 2005, now work in shipyards in Tampa.
One of the plaintiffs, Thornton said, now makes in an hour what he used to get in a month.