By DeWayne Wickham
HAVANA — When you talk to Charles Hill, you sense that he knows more
than what he says about how his time in Cuba will end.
A wanted man who has spent nearly two-thirds of his 59 years on the lam,
Hill and two other men skyjacked a plane from Albuquerque to Cuba in
November 1971. They fled the country after one of them (Hill won't say
who pulled the trigger) killed New Mexico state trooper Robert
Rosenbloom during a highway confrontation.
In the years since the three fugitives — members of the Republic of New
Afrika, a black separatist group — arrived in Cuba, Ralph Goodwin
drowned while trying to save another swimmer, and cancer took the life
of Michael Finney. Hill is the lone living member of the trio wanted for
the killing of Rosenbloom — a crime for which he thinks he has done his
time.
"I paid my price for that. I paid for that with the 38 (years) that I've
been here in exile," he told me Saturday.
Won't get off easily
The murder and skyjacking charges he faces won't be satisfied that
easily. In fact, the FBI and New Mexico prosecutors, no doubt, hope that
the thawing relationship between the Obama administration and the
government of Raul Castro will cause Cuba to ship him back to the USA.
At first, Hill told me he doesn't think that's going to happen. "Cuba is
now my home, and the Cuban government won't turn its back on me after
all these years. I have no worries about that," he said during an
interview outside the Hotel Nacional, which was once a favorite haunt of
the Cuban elite and American mobsters before Fidel Castro came to power
in 1959.
But Hill has good reason to worry. Late last month, Bisa Williams, the
deputy assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs,
headed a U.S. delegation that was in Cuba for a one-day meeting to
discuss re-establishing direct mail service between the two countries.
Instead of returning to the U.S. after the talks ended, Williams quietly
extended her stay for five days and held unannounced talks with a senior
official of Cuba's foreign ministry — the first such high-level talks in
seven years.
Normalization efforts
Despite his denial, Hill knows that the movement towards normalization
of relations between the United States and Cuba doesn't bode well for
him and dozens of other U.S. fugitives in this Caribbean Island nation.
It will ratchet up the pressure for his return to the USA to face murder
and skyjacking charges. "If it happens, it happens," he said, just
moments after assuring me that Cuba won't return him to the U.S.
"I need someone to write a book about my life,' Hill said. "I need
someone to tell my story who understands what could happen back then
when a cop stopped a car with three black men wearing Afros.
"I regret that a life was lost, but it had to be that way. He drew his
gun and he was going to kill us," he said of the deadly encounter with
Rosenbloom. That's his version of what happened, which New Mexico
prosecutors would love to challenge in court.
I don't know whether they'll ever get that chance, but I think Hill
does. I think, in his mind, he's already written the final chapter of
his life. I think he's scripted his ending and is prepared for whatever
will come.
"I'll be here forever," he said, with a glassy look in his eyes. "This
is where I live and this is where I'll die."
DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.
(Hill: Fled to Cuba after fatal shooting in 1971./Kyle Leverett)
Column: Fugitives have good reason to fear closer ties to Cuba - Opinion
- USATODAY.com (6 October 2009)
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/10/column-fugitives-have-good-reason-to-fear-closer-ties-to-cuba-.html?csp=34
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