Center for International Policy

May 18, 2008

Aging U.S. fugitives live as exiles in Cuban neighborhoods

By Ray Sanchez
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Nearly four decades after allegedly killing a New Mexico state trooper and fleeing to Cuba, Charlie Hill lives on the outskirts of the capital in a tiny apartment with a backed-up toilet. He gets by on a ration card and a $10 monthly state stipend.

The 58-year-old grandfather and avowed black separatist listens to South Florida AM radio stations that reach across the straits for news and sports scores. Phrases from the turbulent 1960s, like "right on," pepper his speech.

Hill is among 70 fugitives from American justice who live as ordinary citizens in Cuba, where the revolutionary government welcomed many as militants and political activists who faced persecution in the United States. Cuba's government has refused almost all requests for their return but, in 2006, said "it would no longer provide safe haven to new U.S. fugitives entering Cuba," according to the State Department.

Still, time, not the law, is catching up with the U.S. fugitives. One of the most notorious was Robert Vesco, an American businessman investigated in the 1970s for stealing more than $200 million from a Swiss mutual fund company. Rather than face charges, Vesco moved around Latin America before settling in Cuba in the 1980s.

Burial records at Havana's Colon Cemetery show a 71-year-old man with the same name and birth date as Vesco died on Nov. 23 from lung cancer and was buried the next day in a private plot. His demise was not known, even among other American fugitives, until recent press reports.

Hill is among a handful of holdovers who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, an era when revolution and violent activism was romanticized, and hijacking planes to Cuba was a common escape for radicals seeking refuge. To them, Vesco was another kind of outlaw.

"Vesco was running from the law because he stole money," Hill said. "When you are a revolutionary you're in exile and you still continue your struggle as best you can. I'm an exile."

American fugitives in Cuba include black separatists, Black Panthers and Puerto Rican independence militants. To American law enforcement, they are cop killers, bank robbers and common criminals. Some fugitives speculate their future on the island could end if Cuba tries to work out a prisoner exchange for the so-called Cuban Five — Cuban nationals imprisoned for spying in America.

"I don't want that, but hey man, if it happened, I would have to go down, brother," Hill said.

Wayne Smith, who once served as America's top diplomat in Havana, dismissed the idea of a prisoner swap.

"I think the Cuban government might be interested, but I don't think it would really happen," he said. "The U.S. government would be very reluctant to get into that."

At least one fugitive, Joanne Chesimard, a black nationalist who fled to Cuba after escaping from a U.S. prison in 1979, has gone into hiding on the island. She has a $1 million bounty on her head for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973.

Chesimard now goes by the name Assata Shakur. She once listed her number in the Havana phone book, but now fears that bounty hunters may try to snatch her, according to a friend who has not seen Shakur in more than a year.

For its part, Cuba accuses the United States of harboring one of the island's most-wanted men. Authorities want the United States to hand over anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative and alleged mastermind of the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976. All 73 passengers on board were killed. Venezuela, where the downed plane originated, also has requested his extradition.

Posada Carriles, who was held on immigration charges but freed from a federal prison in Texas a year ago, also is suspected of plotting a series of Havana hotel bombings in the late 1990s. Hundreds of Cuban-Americans honored the exile this month with a sold-out gala in Miami, where he now lives.

In Cuba, Hill longs for the life he left behind.

"I miss apple pie and sweet potato pie, man," he said. "I miss watching football. But that doesn't mean I regret being a revolutionary and doing what I did."

Hill escaped to Cuba in 1971 after a state trooper stopped him and two other members of a black separatist group outside Albuquerque, N.M. They were transporting arms and explosives. One of the suspects shot the trooper, Robert Rosenbloom, in the throat, killing him. The men forced their way into the Albuquerque airport and hijacked an airliner to Cuba.

Hill's accomplices both died in Cuba: Ralph Goodwin drowned at a beach outside Havana decades ago; Michael Finney died of throat cancer in 2005.

Asked if he expected to return to America, Hill said: "Maybe in a coffin."