In a first such decision, a Miami federal jury has found that travel booking company Expedia Group ows $29.85 million to a Cuban-American family in damages for having promoted and sold bookings to Floridians at hotels in land confiscated by the Cuban government during the early days of Fidel Castro’s revolution. The case was filed by Mario Echevarría, one of the heirs of a Cuban family that claimed ownership of Cayo Coco, a small key off the northern coast of central Cuba, against Expedia and its affiliate sites Hotels.com and Orbitz under the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. It is the first of such lawsuits to reach a jury trial.
Tourists on a Cayo Coco beach in December 2020. EFE EFE/Sipa USA
In a first such decision, a Miami federal jury has found that travel booking company Expedia Group ows $29.85 million to a Cuban-American family in damages for having promoted and sold bookings to Floridians at hotels in land confiscated by the Cuban government during the early days of Fidel Castro’s revolution. The case was filed by Mario Echevarría, one of the heirs of a Cuban family that claimed ownership of Cayo Coco, a small key off the northern coast of central Cuba, against Expedia and its affiliate sites Hotels.com and Orbitz under the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. It is the first of such lawsuits to reach a jury trial.
The Helms-Burton Act gives U.S. nationals who hold a claim to property that the Cuban government confiscated without compensation the right to sue companies, American or foreign, who have profited or “trafficked” in such property. From 1996 to 2019, successive U.S. presidents had suspended the Helms-Burton provision, Title III, that provides that legal path. In 2019, President Donald Trump enacted that portion of the act during his first term.
The long pause and several other legal technicalities have complicated the attempts of dozens of U.S. companies and property heirs from prevailing in court. Several other prominent Helms-Burton lawsuits have been turned down on appeal or are headed to the Supreme Court after years of expensive litigation.
But a jury in Florida’s Southern District found last Friday that Expedia and its affiliates didn’t follow the law by promoting tourism to Cuba and by marketing and selling bookings for Cayo Coco’s all-inclusive hotels built in land confiscated from Echevarría’s family in 1960.
“This is a major victory not only for our client, but also for the broader community of Cuban-Americans whose property was wrongfully taken and has been exploited by U.S. companies in partnership with the Cuban communist dictatorship,” attorney Andrés Rivero said. “We are proud to have played a role in securing justice under a law that had never before been tested before a jury.”
The verdict comes six years after Echevarría first notified Expedia that the family was planning to sue in August 2019.
After a two-week trial, the jury found that Echevarría had a 12,5% ownership interest in Cayo Coco and awarded $9,950,000 in damages. The jury also decided to triple the amount the companies must pay because Expedia and its affiliates continued promoting hotels in Cayo Coco after being notified of the potential lawsuit. It is yet unclear if each company would have to pay $30 million separately, and the judge presiding over the case, Federico A. Moreno, has ordered further proceedings.
The travel booking companies have until July to challenge the verdict, Moreno wrote.
Santosh Aravind, a lawyer representing the travel booking companies, told the jury the firms had committed a “mistake,” not an intentional act of “trafficking,” and questioned Echevarría’s inheritance claims on Cayo Coco’s property, Law360 reported. But the jury was unpersuaded.
“We are disappointed in the jury’s verdict, which we do not believe was supported by the law or evidence.,” David Shank, a lawyer representing the companies, told the Miami Herald. “We believe the court was correct to decline immediate entry of judgment and look forward to the court’s consideration of the legal sufficiency of the evidence presented to the jury.”
Bay of Pigs Invasion - Playa Giron
17–20 April 1961; 64 years ago
The Legacy of the Bay of Pigs: Scars on Collective Memory
The Bay of Pigs has left deep scars on the collective memory of both Cubans and Americans. For many Cuban exiles, this defeat symbolizes the lost opportunity to liberate their homeland and the pain of losing loved ones in the process.
The Cuban casualties were hundreds of wounded and 157 dead, whom Cubans remembers as eternal heroes of the homeland for their sacrifice.
The cultural and political impact persists. In Cuba, the victory over the invasion has been celebrated as a triumph of the revolution, while in the United States, it left a legacy of mistrust.
An April 17, 1961 map showing the locations of invading forces. Fidel Castro said one invasion force, apparently the main one, struck in southern part of Las Villas Province (1). Another force was reported ashore at the edge of southern Matanzas Province in Cochinas Bay area (2). Western Pinar Del Rio Province (3) was scene of another reported force. Washington exile forces said another force had landed at Baracoa (4), northeast of Santiago. NBC quoted a Cuban exile spokesman as saying invasion operations were moving ahead favorably in Matanza Province (5), the Santiago area (6), with parachutists dropped on the Isle of Pines (7).
Damir Ortiz, a 10-year-old with leukemia and a rare genetic disease that has caused a tumor in his left eye, was medevaced Wednesday from Cuba to the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, after overcoming bureaucratic obstacles and the reluctance of the Cuban government. 
From left to right, Florida United States Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, Maria Elvira Salazar, and Carlos A. Giménez are three Cuban Americans in the U.S. Congress. They will face tough questions from constituents if a new travel ban by the Trump administration for Cuba and Venezuela goes into effect.
Last month, 79-year-old Martha Beatriz Roque, a prominent dissident and former political prisoner, who received the International Women of Courage Award from the U.S. State Department in absentia last year, was finally allowed to come to Miami by Cuban authorities because she needed medical treatment after falling gravely ill.
“Support for the Cuban people” through cooperation in such humanitarian cases has been a central tenet of U.S. policy under several administrations. Under current versions of a Trump administration plan to ban Cubans from entering the United States, people like Ortiz and Roque would have never made it to Miami — likely dying on the Communist-run island.
The immigration restrictions now on the table would impose an absolute ban on entry by Cuba and Venezuelan nationals, regardless of what country the live in, with no exceptions for the elderly, the sick or harassed dissidents, sources familiar with on-going discussions told the Miami Herald — trapping them in dictatorships recently labeled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as “enemies of humanity.”
The plan — still being crafted by Stephen Miller, a key advisor to President Donald Trump and architect of his mass deportation plan — would also extend similar but slightly less harsh restrictions on Haitian nationals and, sources say, potentially extend to other Caribbean nations.
Before Trump took office, his team had approached several Caribbean governments to accept undocumented migrants from the U.S. whose nations refused to allow them to be returned. Travel bans on those island nations potentially could be used as bargaining chips in negotiations to accept deportees.
The extreme travel ban policies emerging from the White House have been largely kept from Congress so far but will likely pose a major dilemma for many South Florida politicians, whose communities have large populations of constituents with deep ties to the targeted countries.
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The U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, ordered the withdrawal of U.S. government funds from the independent portal CubaNet, as part of the Trump administration's policy to suspend foreign assistance.
The measure represents a significant blow to the work of independent media operating from exile and giving a voice to journalists within Cuba.
In the opinion of Roberto Hechavarría Pilia, director of the news agency, the decision significantly complicates its continuity.
"It will be extremely complicated to maintain our work as it has been conceived until now," he stated to Diario de Cuba, after being informed of the end of the grant by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
CubaNet, founded in 1994, is regarded as the pioneer of independent journalism in Cuba and has served as a platform for journalists on the Island, allowing them to expose the reality censored by the regime.
"Our goal has always been to counteract the propaganda of the Castro regime. Without this funding, the government in Havana will have greater freedom to intensify its propaganda and repression," Hechavarría stated.
The cancellation of funds to CubaNet is not an isolated incident. At the end of January, several independent exile media outlets were notified of the temporary suspension of assistance while the U.S. government reviewed its financing of international programs. However, last week, in the case of CubaNet, the suspension became permanent.
According to the received notification, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Peter W. Marocco, director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources at the State Department and designated deputy administrator of USAID, determined that the funding program for CubaNet "was not in the national interest." As a result, they decided to terminate and rescind it.
For Hechavarría, the most serious consequence of this decision is that CubaNet will be unable to fulfill its mission with the necessary effectiveness.
"What is happening with independent Cuban journalism, civil society, freedom of expression, and the struggle for democracy in Cuba is a step backwards, just as the Castro regime is at its weakest point," he denounced.
Furthermore, he warned about the geopolitical significance of the measure: "Cuba remains a totalitarian regime just 90 miles from the United States, allied with Russia, China, and Iran. Undoubtedly, for Havana, it is good news that efforts to oversee its actions are being reduced."
Source Cibercuba
The U.S. State Department under Secretary Marco Rubio abruptly canceled
foreign aid programs supporting opposition activists, political
prisoners and religious groups in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, after concluding that they were not “in the national interest.” raising concerns about a shift in U.S. foreign policy.
The canceled programs were managed by the International Republican Institute (IRI), a nonprofit organization linked to the ruling party, and were focused on promoting democracy in authoritarian countries, according to a publication from El Nuevo Herald.
The publication states that “all but three of the 95 programs” that the Institute had in these countries were abruptly canceled. The remaining three programs, related to groups in Venezuela, are on hold, following President Donald Trump’s executive order to freeze all foreign aid funds for 90 days.
“The rest of the 175 programs of the Institute worldwide are also in limbo because they rely on funds directly allocated by Congress to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED has said it has been unable to access the money,” the article reads.
In the cancellation notices sent by the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), it was stated that the contracts “were not aligned” with the agencies’ priorities and were not “in the national interest.”
“The IRI’s Democratic counterpart, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), is facing a similar challenge. Sources said that about a hundred programs were terminated, and only one program remained in the region, focused on Venezuela,” says the publication.
Most employees of both institutes, the National Endowment for Democracy, and other organizations working with foreign aid programs have been given administrative leave.
A Supreme Court ruling ordered the US government to release part of the funds owed for the work already carried out by some of these organizations and contractors managing foreign aid programs. However, with so many contracts already canceled and staff on leave or dismissed, it is unclear how the government will proceed.
In a Senate hearing on Wednesday, February 26, 2024, regarding the progress of US interests in the Western Hemisphere, Florida Senator Rick Scott echoed current opinions on foreign aid among Trump administration officials in an exchange about how to justify the money spent to taxpayers.
“My problem is that I can’t go to Florida and say, ‘Boy, I’m excited about how much money we spent on foreign aid because something might happen. Let’s see: the Castro regime still controls Cuba, Venezuela just stole another election, Ortega is strengthening himself in Nicaragua,'” said the senator.
The suspension of foreign aid programs for the promotion of democracy in authoritarian countries, a bipartisan US policy maintained for decades, has left many wondering if the Trump Administration has abandoned that objective.
El Nuevo Herald also indicates that the issue was addressed in a call with IRI leaders to warn staff working for the Florida Congressional delegation, home to the largest Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan communities in the US, “that the organization would not survive much longer without funding, probably only a few weeks.”
They add that in the call, the president of the International Republican Institute, Daniel Twining, reportedly said that “cuts to democracy promotion would only benefit dictators in places like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.”
Source: The Miami Herald