[slickmisc] Cuban Escapee Can Not Escape Government Tyranny

["Rich Martin, Editor Slick eZine" <richslick@xxxxxxxxxx>]

       © 2002 Rich Martin
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Immediate Release
Contact: Jay Walley
The Paragon Foundation News Service (PFNS)
Alamogordo, New Mexico
Email: PFNS@zianet.com
Contact Paragon Foundation Offices: Toll Free 1-877-847-3443

Article and image (if provided) granted free of copyrights.
________________________________________________________


by Danny E. Meek, Esq.

PFNS, Naples FL As a young man, Julio Antonio Concepcion was trained as
a Third Officer in the Cuban Merchant Marines. He was a 22-year-old student
at the Cuban Naval Academy and had decided to become a career sailor.

He soon discovered that he was unable to live his dream, as his home country became increasingly violent and turbulent. The freedoms he had cherished and was trained to protect were quickly eroding and the future was bleak under the dictatorship of Fidel Castro.

Concepcion and his family made a fateful decision and decided to flee from tyranny to the freedom of the United States with thirty-five other Cuban
nationals.

They fled their home in Muriel on August 26, 1962, in three small boats. After a harrowing journey, only two boats washed ashore at Key West, Florida. Their ninety-two-mile odyssey took more than ninety hours to complete. Unfortunately, on board the missing boat were Conception's mother and brother.

Concepcion later learned the captain of that boat had become disoriented and was forced to return to Cuba. Although his mother survived, she was imprisoned as punishment for attempting to escape Castro's control.

One year after beginning their new lives in America, Concepcion and his
family knew that they had to return to Cuba to bring his mother and younger brother to the United States. The family could not continue to live without them.

Concepcion, his father, brother, and two other friends purchased an old twenty-five-f oot Chris Craft, filled it with 250 gallons of gas, bottled water, and some food, and left Key Biscayne. The old boat soon failed them. They began to take on water and were forced to abandon the vessel somewhere in the waters off Cuba.

While the others clung to parts of the sinking boat, Concepcion and his brother Bertin attached themselves to a discarded fire extinguisher, and slowly drifted toward the Cuban shoreline. They were in the water for hours, risking death not only from drowning and hypothermia, but from sharks and the ever-present Cuban patrol ships.

Miraculously, Concepcion and all but one of the group made it to shore. They eventually made their way along the coast to the home of Concepcion's mother, who had been released from prison.

As soon as they arrived at her home, they immediately began making plans to return to Miami. Within a few days, the entire family left Castro's Cuba for the second time, for the freedom of the United States.

Somehow, those life and death struggles do not seem far removed as Concepcion and many of his Cuban neighbors now find themselves embroiled in another bitter struggle to protect their homes and liberty.

A former painter, Concepcion is now a beekeeper and lives with approximately 350 other homeowners in an area called The 8.5 Square Mile Area (8.5 SMA). The 8.5 SMA consists of approximately 5,500 acres of land near the extreme southeastern corner of the Everglades National Park. They have formed The
8.5 SMA Legal Defense Fund to protect themselves against the unwarranted taking of their land.

"My wife and I built this house fifteen years ago. Now they are trying to force us to move," said a saddened Concepcion. "We can not and will not permit it to happen."

The Everglades Act, enacted in 1989, established a plan to restore natural water flows to Everglades National Park and protect affected private property landowners from flooding. Section 104 of the Everglades Act required the Corps to modify a system of canals, levees, and other structures. Known as the Central and Southern Florida Project (C&SF Project) it was to ".improve water deliveries into and where practicable, to take
steps to restore the natural hydrological conditions within." the Park. It also directed the Secretary of the Army, ".to construct a flood protection system for that portion of presently developed land within such area.."

The Corps never provided the flood protection to the 8.5 SMA as directed by Congress. Instead, a lengthy and complex series of plans, proposals, meetings and hearings ultimately resulted in a decision by the Corps in 2000. The Corps selected a plan called Alternative 6D, which proposes what the Corps calls a "flood mitigation" plan for the residents of the 8.5 SMA, instead of "flood protection." The Corps proposes to build a levee and
seepage canal through the middle of the 8.5 SMA community; to force residents out of all homes and land northwest of that levee and within the seepage canal; and to flood those portions of the 8.5 SMA. The remaining residents, southeast of the levee, would face berms, levees, and canals, in what was once the center of their community.

"We will not be forced from our home," said Conception's wife Naomi defiantly. "We were forced to cross dangerous seas on two occasions to bring our family to this place. We left our home and our country. This is now our new home, our new country. We will not leave."

Concepcion said that he has tried to contact the office of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, but has received no response.

"He does not know what is going on down here," he said, shaking his head. "I voted for him before, but it will not happen again. It is sad, what they are doing to us.to all of us. We must all fight."

The 8.5 SMA Legal Defense Fund has joined the 15,000 Coalition, Inc., The Everglades Protection Society, and The Dade County Farm Bureau as part of more than seven hundred groups pledging their support to The Sawgrass Rebellion nationwide. The largest property rights advocate group in the United States, The Paragon Foundation of Alamogordo, New Mexico, recently agreed to help South Florida residents in their stand against "unwarranted
taking" of their properties.

The Sawgrass Rebellion will culminate with a property rights rally, when four caravans from across the United State converge at Naples, Florida October 17 and 18. Participants will then travel across the Everglades to Homestead, Florida on October.19.

Julio and Naomi Concepcion fled the tyranny of Castro's Cuba only to find themselves waging a battle for their home against the United States government.

-00-

PFNS is a public service of The Paragon Foundation, Alamogordo, NM 1-877-847-3443

 
 


Darby Convey Route 
http://www.sawgrassrebellion.org/caravan.html 
Dale Rapp 
Phone (740)857-1675 
E-mail dalerappii@msn.com 


Rich Martin
Editor, Slick eZine
http://slickplus.spunge.org/list/






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