- Author’s sense of justice inspires anti-embargo novel
In a story about bad law, lawyers are the heroes
By Kelly Bell
Cuba Cruising Net
Jay Lillie’s love affair with Cuba began many years ago when he arrived there by boat, albeit a very big boat. Six months at Guantanamo Bay, his arrival courtesy of a U.S. Navy destroyer, marked the beginning of Lillie’s lifelong fascination with the unique island nation and its people.
|
|||||||||||||||||
Lillie is a sailor of the ocean racing variety, not a cruiser, and his research for Havana Passage springs from his experience as an attorney practicing international law, but that is not to say that his book does not advocate the cruising point of view. It also explains why it is the older lawyer who, in the end, gets the girl.
That young woman is a law student, who makes a film challenging the legitimacy of U.S. Cuba policy, which prevents U.S. mariners from cruising the coast. What the Kate Stevens character dramatizes is the injustice inherent in laws restricting the freedom to travel, no matter how well intended originally. “Kate’s position on absolute prohibition is not unreasonable, it’s just that no one has ever tested the position,” Lillie said in an October 2005 telephone interview.
Lillie told Cuba Cruising Net that he spent time at Marina Hemingway in Havana, researching the seagoing parts of the novel. If you’ve ever considered—as we have—what it would take to escape from the marina were the need to arise, you’ll find some good advice inHavana Passage. (Hint: Don’t try it in a sailboat)
He says that one of his most productive trips to Cuba was in 2003 with a group of lawyers and doctors, during the final stages of writing Havana Passage. During that time, Lillie spoke with many mid-level Cuban bureaucrats. He said that Cuba has a divided psyche: One side represents the old party line (“Talking to party people was worthless.”); the other is a younger generation whose aspirations co-exist with the propaganda.
“All the working folks (49 years and younger) know is Fidel Castro, and their job is to do the best they can with what little they have,” he said. “Even with restrictions, they are no less successful than Cubans in San Juan, Miami, and Washington. This promising, conscientious generation is a positive for the future of Cuba.” Lillie said this group tends to speak English and have a record of accomplishment, including in the law. The vast majority of practicing Cuban lawyers, he said, are women. That’s why one of his Cuban characters, Lara, is a lawyer.
“While her character represents despotism, it is also a true depiction of the new generation and an accurate prototype of Cuban future,” Lillie said.
“In terms of the travel and trading embargos, it became wildly clear to the visiting lawyers that the policy is actually playing into Castro’s hands. While the embargo keeps everyone down, it doesn’t mean they are unhappy. The point is: they make the best of the situation whether farmers, fishermen or government employees.”
The question remains: If Fidel were to be gone tomorrow, what would change? Lillie’s answer: “Nothing, if that’s the cornerstone for lifting the embargo.”
Lillie’s position against the Cuban embargo was shaped by his personal sense of outrage. He described the plight of a scuba diver who had visited Cuba’s south coast by using a Canadian travel agent specializing in dive trips. When he returned home, the diver dared to tell his story to U.S. customs officials. Two months later, the U.S. Treasury Department billed the diver $40,000 for violation of treasury regulations. How did the Treasury officials know he had spent money in Cuba? They didn’t—they simply assumed the he violated regulations, Lillie said. Lillie volunteered to represent the man in a test case, but the diver’s Canadian travel arranger paid the claim to avoid further complications.
Lillie is driven to testing this position. In fact, when he returned from his last trip to Cuba, he demanded something from a Cuban customs official that they don’t typically do: Stamp his passport. He wanted to see if that would elicit a response from Cuban officials. So far, no response, no dunning letter in the mail. So far.
Cuba Cruising Net wanted to know whether Cubans genuinely see the U.S. as a potential aggressor or whether it is a position arrived at cynically to martial the population against a common enemy. So much of the North Coast seems to be off limits to cruising boats that it begged the question of whether Cubans in general might really fear that’s where the next Bay of Pigs might be.
“The Prime Minister Hernandez character is not far off from what’s really there and is a good representation of the Cuban fear in general,” Lillie said. In Lillie’s novel, Hernandez eschews propaganda and honestly expresses his fears and concerns about foreign domination in a private conversation with Gordon Cox, the protagonist-lawyer. “He (Hernandez) is looking at the future, and doesn’t want the same American influence as there was in Hemingway’s time and doesn’t want Venezuela’s influence,” Lillie said, referring to the deepening relationship between Fidel Castro and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
Lillie also noted that while most Cubans realize that Cuban success will be through trading, they are at the same time “terribly afraid because they don’t understand why the embargo is still being enforced.”
Lillie said he believes that the Helms-Burton Act—the legal underpinning for the embargo—has played a major role in instilling fear among Cubans. ”People in Havana are genuinely afraid that Cuban Americans (in Washington and in Miami) have significant influence to eventually make Washington policy for Cuba that is not a shared future vision of Cuba. They are especially afraid of Miami Cubans. To them, America poses a real threat.”
Lillie said he chose a woman president because doing so let him remain neutral. “As I was writing the book, I wanted it to be action-oriented, not just telling it like lawyers do. So I posed questions to myself to build credible characters, such as, ‘Is that something that George Bush would say, or is this something Clinton would say? I wanted to remain neutral.”