Santiago Alvarez and the Santrina
Taken from Progreso Weekly
November 24, 2005
Last weekend the Miami media informed us that authorities had raided the offices of Santiago Alvarez, to whom some refer to as terrorist Luis Posada Carriles' "benefactor."
Afterwards they informed that on the morning of Saturday, November 19, Alvarez was detained and charged with having weapons, a silencer without permit and a false passport.
At time of publishing (Nov. 21, 2005) the information published by El Nuevo Herald leads its readers to associate Alvarez' detention with Cuban President Fidel Castro's insistence that it was the yacht "Santrina", belonging to Alvarez, that brought Posada Carriles illegally to Florida.
Does this leading technique used by El Nuevo Herald demonstrate the true reason for Santiago Alvarez' detention? Or does Alvarez' detention with things not related to the Posada case? Or will it answer other previous moves that will soon be divulged whereby Alvarez, Posada and others will be involved in? Are we witnessing a trade of Alvarez for Posada? Could it be that we are settling for a cure before we are even aware of the disease? Or will it answer questions of much greater political involvement?
These and other questions remain open. Progreso Weekly prefers to satisfy El Nuevo Herald and continue with what they suggest in their published reports. To satisfy them we will reproduce an interview with Renan Castro, Mexican journalist for the daily Por Esto, from Quintana Roo, transmitted on June 3rd of this year in Francisco Aruca's radio program. Said interview, which was then transcribed and published June 9th in Progreso Weekly, again brings up the Posada-Alvarez connection. We take this opportunity to invite El Nuevo Herald to perform an investigative report on the Santrina, its stay in Mexico 's Isla Mujeres and to also interview some of the persons cited here by Renan Castro.
From Havana
"Posada Sailed for Miami on the 'Santrina'"
Mexican journalist Renán Castro, of the Por Esto daily, says in an exclusive interview.
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
Radio Progreso Alternativa/Progreso Weekly Havana Bureau
The former mayor of Isla Mujeres ([*]) saw him, as well as the president of the fishing cooperative at the island. He was wearing white bermuda shorts, a guayabera shirt of the same color and sandals. Other people also identified him.
The subject of Posada Carriles' entry into the United States is still an issue of interest; it is controversial and possibly could complicate the legal process due to the involvement of other people in the crime of smuggling of illegal aliens. On his part, Posada Carriles claimed at a press conference that he entered US soil by land from Mexico . Yet, Havana officially insists that he came to the US by sea on the Santrina.
The newspaper that has closely investigated the issue is Por Esto, a daily published in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. Renán Castro is the journalist who has led the team of several colleagues that did the research for a series of reports on the matter.
The following exclusive interview was broadcast by Radio Progreso Alternativa on Friday, June 2, and which Progreso Weekly publishes in a written version.
Manuel Alberto Ramy (MAR): How did your investigation on the Santrina begin? Did you have any previous information of the relation of the boat and its crew with Luis Posada Carriles or was it a coincidence?
Renán Castro (RC): We began our investigative reporting that led us to confirm the presence of Luis Posada Carriles on Mexican soil due to an accident, the damage in a reef where the Santrina ran aground on the early morning of March 14. At 7 a.m. that same day the boat and the crew were rescued by members of the fishing cooperative at Isla Mujeres, who warned the Mexican Navy and participate in the rescue. Consequently the boat is taken to the concrete pier at Isla Mujeres and there a routine check is made by Mexican authorities. Up to that moment is routine case. What began to call our attention from the moment in which the crew of the Santrina went ashore was their reticence with the media.
MAR: How did that happen?
RC: When they were walking down the pier Santiago Álvarez was heading the group (you can see that in the photographs we took). When our reporter Yolanda Gutiérrez, who is the first to arrive, approaches him, he evades her very rudely and hides behind José Pujol, who is the skipper of the boat. Pujol, in an insulting and rude manner pushes her aside and strutters past, flanked by Navy and Public Security personnel, and heads for the Port Authority. There they gave their depositions and remained isolated for 6 to 7 hours, which is customary in these cases, and the following day the Port Authority allows the media to contact them. Reluctantly, angrily and rudely they agree to answer a few questions, among them the reason for their presence in Isla Mujeres and why hadn't they used the Port Authority's services to enter the reef area, the second in importance in the world. José Pujol, in an uncivil tone, said that they were an international ecological foundation and were on a test run, because the Santrina was going to be a school ship, a fact that later ecologists in Quintana Roo and Mexico refuted, because there is no record of the foundation they mentioned.
Afterwards they stayed only the necessary time to get provisions and repair the boat in a place called Port Island , and immediately left for Miami , Florida . Six people came in, but according to eye witnesses' and official accounts seven people left.
The claim is not a Por Esto invention, they are the testimony of the people that saw all the maneuvers and the suspicious entry of strangers to Isla Mujeres. Let's go a while back to how we first heard of this situation and how it evolved, until we were able to denounce what Mexican authorities tried to suppress: the entry to Mexican soil of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and his exit on the Santrina.
A month later, on April 14, Fidel Castro makes a declaration to international media about the presence of the Santrina that, according to what he knew at the time, had gone to Isla Mujeres to rescue Luis Posada Carriles. It drew our attention and I went to Lieutenant López Bridge , on the Mexican border with Belize , where I began my research with people working at the border post and people who claim that Luis Posada Carriles had entered Mexico on March 6 or 7.
MAR: Are you telling me that he entered Mexican territory at Chetumal?
RC: That's right. When he entered Mexico a car was waiting for him with people that looked like Cubans and who took him to Cancun , with a 1 or 1 ½ hour stopover to eat at a town called Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Six hours later they arrive at Cancun . Posada stays there for some days, hidden in a warehouse where a gang that smuggles Cuban illegal aliens keeps people that leave Cuba and arrive to Cancun . That's a fact that I hope to confirm in order to make a parallel investigation. Later on Posada leaves for Isla Mujeres, where he stays the following five days. We don't know the exact number of days that he was at each place, Cancun and Isla Mujeres, but the island's life long chronicler and former mayor, Fidel Villanueva Madrid , saw him at Isla Mujeres' Harbor Marina.
MAR: He saw Posada Carriles?
RC: He saw him strolling by, looking at the repairing of boats. And he was also seen by Francisco Gaitán, the president of the Isla Mujeres fishing cooperative, who gave us the same version of the story two days later, that he had seen him at the seaside promenade wearing white Bermudas shorts, a white guayabera shirt and the typical sandals that tourist wear in the area.
MAR: How were those two people that you mentioned able to identify Posada Carriles? Because he is not in the media every day.
RC: The fact is that Posada Carriles looks very much like a close friend of Fidel Villanueva's, who is the manager of the Isla Mujeres' port. Villanueva comes up to him and taps him on the shoulder, believing he was his "compadre", and Posada turns around and says to him with a Cuban accent: "Hey, chico , you take me for someone else."
"When this thing blows up and I saw his picture", said Fidel Villanueva, "I told myself, 'I saw this guy, I talked to him'". That's the most authentic and closer to the truth version I know.
MAR: When you wrote in Por Esto that people at Isla Mujeres had seen Posada walking down the street, did you mean those two witnesses?
RC: Francisco Villanueva, Francisco Gaitán and some other people. We had as many as ten depositions of people that have been living there for many years, some of them native to the island. There is nothing that can mislead us.
MAR: Did you show photographs to those witnesses?
RC: Yes, we did. Por Esto has the largest readership on Isla Mujeres, so when we referred to the photographs that we had published they recognized him and said they had seen him. "This gentleman was here, he went to such and such place, he was strolling by the seaside promenade. He was at Mocambo, near the Posada Hotel". And they made us think that maybe 2 or 3 people weren't enough. But if 7 or 8 more people witnessed that they saw him, heck, I think that we weren't wrong.
MAR: After those days that Posada Carriles spent in Isla Mujeres, what happened?
RC: He was there as a tourist, he was resting until they came on the Santrina to rescue him. That's what happened, we have no report that he carried out any action that could have been a crime. There is nothing to point that out. He was waiting for people that were coming to rescue him. That's all Posada Carriles did on Mexican soil.
MAR: There were people on another boat at the time that the Santrina, after being repaired, sailed for Miami from Isla Mujeres. Were you able to document that information?
RC: I don't believe in that hypothesis and we didn't even mention it in our paper, because that would have altered our research that Posada Carriles himself partly corroborated, because it was convenient for him. Posada Carriles never could have left Mexico through that route, because of the violent events in our country, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico , from Tamaulipas to Quintana Roo. Don't forget that in November 2004 the drug traffic executed 12 people. It's much harder to enter the United States through our north border, unless you are connected to the mafia that flourishes there trafficking in illegal aliens. Posada Carriles traces the land route that takes to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in the North, to enter the United States through Texas, which is the same route used by the gang that smuggles in illegal Cubans. Let me tell you this: the Quintana Roo sea border, the Mexican sea border is most unprotected at its northern area. Every day an average of two shark fishing launches enter the country with approximately 1.5 tons of cocaine that mostly goes to the United States . So if Colombians can bring drugs to supply their Mexican partners, don't you think that it would be much easier to enter and leave by sea route at any moment? We detected the Santrina because it had an accident on a reef, because they were unfamiliar with navigation in the area. Otherwise we would never have known anything. That's why I believe that taking the chance of another boat protecting them, I don't think it's true. Indeed there was a Cuban-American cell that helped him during his stay in Quintana Roo, but in a different manner, supplying him with resources, harboring him, because it seems that he didn't stay at a hotel. We checked with the Mexican Hotel Association and there is no report of even one Cuban-American or a single Cuban that closely resembled his characteristics.
MAR: So according to your investigation he left for Miami on the Santrina?
RC: Undoubtedly. And additionally, something called our attention. A few days ago Mr. Pierrot, the Secretary of the Navy, declared that they had a report of Posada Carriles' presence at the Santrina, and now one of his subordinates said that it's not true.
MAR: What's your interpretation of the fact that the Assistant Secretary of the Navy denies his superior's previous statement 48 hours later? That, together with the fact that the Secretary's statement was published only in local and state media, such as El Sol de Zacatecas, but that El Sol de México, which is the parent national newspaper of the chain did not run the item.
RC: Let me give you an example. Have you ever heard that a statement by the CEO of a company is publicly refuted by an assistant manager? I think that these are contradictions due to the jitteriness of the federal government when it tried to evade its responsibility about Posada's stay in Mexico . I believe Mr. Pierrot should answer that question. But we are aware of that and knew beforehand that what the Secretary of the Navy said is true. What the Rear Admiral said was not even fit to print, because I believe it's in the interest of other people, and the federal government should answer to Mexican and international public opinion. There are many unanswered questions and I think it's time for them to do it, because this international conflict is threatening security and our relations with the Cuban government, and even with the US government.
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([*]) Tiny Isla Mujeres ( Women Island ), on the Caribbean coast of Mexico , is a 15 minute ride away from Cancun by ferryboat. Its main economic activity is tourism and fishing. According to the 1990 census, its population was 10,666 inhabitants.