Letters: Yasiel Puig, the Dodgers and human trafficking
Re “Puig and the Cuba embargo,” Editorial, April 15
The Times hit the nail on the head in its editorial saying that the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig’s harrowing escape from Cuba at the hands of human traffickers shows why the U.S. should lift its economic embargo on the communist country.
But I think the real tragedy here is that the U.S. is tolerating these human traffickers, who are making money by smuggling people to freedom, then selling them to make a profit.
Puig is being used to peddle tickets to baseball games and garner TV viewers, which is not much different economically from smuggling foreigners into the U.S. to peddle sex or drugs. Human trafficking in any form is wrong. But, apparently, not if a major corporation needs that person to help it make money.
Trafficking is wrong no matter who does it, and it should be made a priority to stop this evil trade from continuing.
Stephen Jones
Palmdale
The definition of hypocrisy is U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba.
We have no qualms about having diplomatic relations with communist China, our biggest economic competitor in the 21st century, or with communist Vietnam, where more than 50,000 of our soldiers died. But an island of 11 million people seems to represent an existential threat.
The international community wants diplomatic relations between the two neighbors. The American people, according to recent polls, agree.
Nestor Fantini
Northridge
Could someone please explain how the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba has anything to do with the fact that Puig had to sneak out of the country? Wouldn’t a better topic for an editorial be how Cuba is a de facto prison for all of its citizens, not just talented baseball players?
Andrew Rodriguez
Jackson, Calif.
Human trafficking or smuggling is a worldwide issue, and it’s illegal.
How is Puig’s journey from Cuba to Mexico, apparently made possible by a drug cartel with
financing from a Florida man in exchange for part of his future earnings, any different? People were hired to perform an illegal act in exchange for money.
Are not Major League Baseball and the Dodgers indirectly complicit? This sounds no different to me than shepherding illegal immigrants from Mexico to the United States.
Bill Mazur
Orange
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