Chabot Spectator

Issue date: 10/12/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Jack Barnwell Guest speaker and book editor, Salim Lamrani, gives a passionate lecture on the "Cuban Five" at College Hour Wednesday in Chabot's Building 600.

Chabot history instructor Rick Moniz chaired a discussion on U.S./Cuban Policy Tuesday during College Hour.

The featured speaker, Salim Lamrani, discussed the U.S. justice system as it was doled out to the "Cuba Five" in a Miami trial in December 2001.  The Cuban Five are five Cuban nationals who were accused of espionage.  Each is serving consecutive life sentences in U.S. prisons.  Lamrani contended in his talk that their trial was a miscarriage of justice and was the result of a U.S. State Department conspiracy.

He went on to discuss what he called U.S. foreign policy terrorism against Cuba.  He is the editor of a book of essays recently published, Superpower Principles, U.S. Terrorism Against Cuba.

He claimed the source of much of his information is from classified 1970's State Department documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.  Copies of his book were available after his presentation.   

Delvis Fernandez Levy, president of the Cuban American Alliance, also spoke at Tuesday's rally.  Fernandez is a Cuban immigrant who came to the U.S. the early '60s and became a Chabot math instructor in 1966.  He is now retired.  He said he is homesick for Chabot, but he also longs for his family in his Cuban homeland.

Levy joined instructor Moniz and students on recent Cuba trips.  He lamented about the new restrictions that prevent U.S. citizens from visiting family members in Cuba.  His slide presentation explored his hometown community of Santa Clara and many of the other locations visited by Chabot student trips to Cuba.  Finally he showed a recent picture of himself and his bed-ridden 92-year-old Cuban aunt who helped raise him.  American citizens are now prohibited from visiting Cuban relatives not in the immediate family.

Moniz is well known for his leading small groups of students on trips to foreign lands.

Most recently, Moniz has focused on cultural exchange trips to Cuba.  U.S. government policies are now so restrictive, these trips educating Chabot students have been eliminated. Moniz also organized last fall's three-day "Faces of Cuba" conference at Chabot.

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