If all is indeed well that ends well, according to the Immortal Bard, then one cannot help but be happy today for Raul Garcia.
Living for the last three years as a refugee after serving a 20-year prison sentence for drug trafficking in Barbados, the Cuban, whose hunger strike and long battle for freedom made headlines worldwide, finally has somewhere to call home.
Neither his birthplace nor the United States where he grew up – nor even Colombia where he resided as an adult and decided to walk the path of criminal activity – wanted the convicted drug courier on its shores.
After heated discussion, threats and pleadings, it was therefore left to Barbados to give Garcia at least a fair hearing in the Supreme Court to contest what was arguably an illegal immigration detention, which he had initially protested via a series of hunger strikes at Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds.
The court of law proved to be the correct course in dealing with what had essentially become a human rights issue; for, admittedly, Garcia had already paid his price to the Barbadian justice system and was essentially a “free” man who continued to live as a prisoner years after his sentence ended.
On the other hand, no one knew just how deeply ingrained in the wide drug underworld Garcia’s roots were, so allowing this foreign drug mule free passage across these fields and hills was seen by many as a dangerous precedent.
Most challenging of all, however, was that no country wanted the Cuban convict, so the process of deportation became a virtual impossibility and a daily headache for the Freundel Stuart administration.
Prominent lawyer David Comissiong took up the refugee’s cause, however, treading on what was essentially virgin territory from a Barbados jurisprudential standpoint. And after heavy wrangling for over seven months in the High Court, Justice Margaret Reifer ruled that Garcia should be freed at last on April 25.
Since that eventful day when Garcia emerged from the Supreme Court complex around 3 p.m. with his hands raised, unescorted for the first time after months of hearings, the father of four lost his own father at the end of May.
But he had been able to speak to the 85-year-old Emiliano right up to the end, thanks to the modern technology of Skype.
Having also expressed the wish in his last affidavit on December 11, 2012, to see his parents before they died, since both were in poor health, he now has an opportunity to see in the flesh his 88-year-old mother Mercedes, who resides in Miami, Florida.
For the 59-year-old, who has also suffered the loss of one of his children via a drug overdose, the freedom to return to the home he fled at age ten should be a fitting end to a chapter that was characterized by tremendous pain, conflicting public opinion, justice and compassion – all of which have resulted in Garcia now miraculously having at least two homes, one of which will always be Barbados.