No peace for the living
Cevin Allen got busted for taking the ashes of his missionary parents to their final resting place in Cuba.
Allen, 58, a transit worker in Seattle, spent seven years of his childhood in Havana as the son of Christian missionaries Ralph and Mildred Allen. There, Spanish became his first language and Cuba a second home to the family.
When his parents died in a house fire in 1987, Allen decided to take their remains to Cuba. During a 1997 trip, he scattered their ashes at the site of their former church and into the Atlantic Ocean. He also met with former students of his parents.
“It was this trip that finally allowed me to deal with the pain of losing my parents,” Allen said.
Returning to the United States, he was confronted by U.S. Customs officials during a stopover in Nassau, Bahamas. But he thought he had nothing to worry about.
“I did not bring any contraband or anything,” he said. “I thought it was very clear-cut.”
In January 1998, Allen received a letter from the federal government telling him he would be fined $7,500 for the trip. Allen was one of the relatively few cases on which federal enforcers acted during the Clinton administration.
With the aid of lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, Allen’s fine was eventually reduced to $700. That was before the Bush administration crackdown on Cuban travel. Allen remains frustrated by his experience, one now being shared by many more Americans who traveled to Cuba.
“I still don’t believe I did anything wrong,” he said. “I would love to go back. I think as Americans, if we were allowed to travel freely, things would open up. It would open up from the fact that there would be more communication — there’s a feeling down there that we’re bad people. And we’re not. But that’s part of Fidel’s propaganda.”
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