EX-CUBAN CALLS AMERICAN POLICY `IMMORAL'

Mati Stone was born in a country where the truth was always whispered. Elections were fixed. A young lawyer named Fidel Castro was trying to start a revolution on the eastern side of the island.

Now it's time for Cuban Americans to speak out against a wrongheaded U.S. policy toward Cuba and against the hard-liners who seem to be the only Cuban American voice Washington listens to, she says.

"Cubans need to take a look at what they have learned in exile and what they have learned about democracy."

Stone, a Cape Girardean who left Cuba as a child in 1956, watches all the CNN reports about Haiti and Iraq and wonders what is becoming of the country and relatives she left behind 40 years ago.

An elderly aunt and many cousins still live in Cuba.

Only weeks ago, the same news shows were filled with stories about Cuban refugees lost at sea and those who survived being taken to encampments at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.

Now they seem to be almost forgotten, but certainly not by Stone and the approximately 1 million other Cuban Americans in the United States.

The United States has turned its back on once-welcome Cuban refugees only now that communism no longer is perceived as a threat, she says.

"(The policy) changed because the propaganda of the escapees in the news media is no longer needed.

By having Castro keep a lid on immigration, she says, the United States has given him carte blanche to clamp down even harder on the Cuban people.

With U.S. voters in an anti-immigrant mood and politicians afraid of angering almost any voting bloc, she says election-year politics are continuing the deprivation suffered by the 11 million people in her homeland.

"I think it's an immoral policy," she said.

Now a licensed clinical social worker in Cape Girardeau, Stone left Cuba with her family three years before Castro came to power in 1959.

She remembers her Catholic school uniforms and the European-style buildings, and the dictatorship that caused the whispers.

"It was very noticeable to me as a child, the tension," she says. "It was very hush-hush."

Her family moved to Miami, where many from her hometown relocated.

She expected foreigners to be strange, "like Martians," but found her surroundings very familiar.

In Cape Girardeau, Stone has found a home much like the one she left in Cuba. She points to a photograph of Regla, a bayside town just east of Havana, in her photo album.

"There's the water, there's the railroad track, there's the church," she says. "Just like Cape."

Another old picture was taken on Cojimar Beach, where many of the recent refugees set off in their makeshift rafts.

Word is that her hometown is decaying because most of the resources have been put into dressing up Old Havana for tourists. Work is scarce. She knows of an engineer who bakes bread at home and sells it to neighbors.

"Cuba is not a Third World country," she says. "It's what Castro has done."

Over the decades, one thing hasn't changed much in Cuba.

"The way of getting along in the country is to be nice to everybody," Stone says. "You never know who's who."

She's afraid to tell too much about her relatives, fearing they somehow could be punished by the regime because of her opinions.

The fear of speaking out against leaders hasn't disappeared now that Cubans are in the United States.

In Miami, there are confrontations between anti-Castro hard-liners and those with different points of view.

"Cuban politics is nasty," she says.

Stone certainly is no fan of Castro. She compares him to Stalin and Hitler.

"He simply is deluded and obsessed," she says. "But any expectation that people are going to revolt is unlikely. People are focussed on survival."

She hopes all Cuban Americans will speak out and try to turn U.S. policy toward solutions that can curb the suffering her people are enduring on the island and at Guantanamo Bay.

"In this advanced age we should not limit ourselves to vengeance. . . .(Castro's) thinking is not going to be affected by it," she said.

"What's more important, taking vengeance or making sure 11 million people have food?"