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Human Rights Activists in the Castros' Cuba

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Human Rights Activists in the Castros' Cuba i TAKING THE FIRST STEPS: HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS IN THE CASTROS’ CUBA ___________________________________ By DAN SANTELLA ___________________________________ A THESIS Submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of the Creighton University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of International Relations _________________________________ Omaha, NE January 27, 2017 ii iii For decades, Fidel Castro had essentially limitless power and a constant megaphone to accompany it; his voice and opinions on all topics have been projected and disseminated ad nauseam in Cuba. This thesis gives the podium to the dissenters (especially to Oswaldo Payá and Yoani Sánchez), their arguments against Fidel and Raúl Castro’s government, and corresponding fights to realize their goals. This thesis inquires: to what extent have internal Cuban human rights advocacy movements, organizations, and activists been successful in influencing change in the Cuban government’s respect for and protection of human rights? This thesis proposes that while full protection of human rights for all in the Castros’ Cuba was and is not yet a reality, the work of internal Cuban human rights activists has not been in vain. This thesis examines treatment of human rights in the Castros’ Cuba by way of utilizing both quantitative and qualitative information. The collective conclusions about the lack of respect for and protection of human rights in Cuba identify these concerns as significant and worthy of international attention. iv To and for my parents; with gratitude to them, Elizabeth Elliot-Meisel, LuAnn Schwery, and Erika Moreno v Chapter One .....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter Two...................................................................................................................................10 Chapter Three.................................................................................................................................30 Chapter Four ................................................................................................................................199 Chapter Five .................................................................................................................................255 Appendix ......................................................................................................................................267 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................287 vi Tables, Graphs CIRI data ................................................................................................................... 60-65; 267-272 Freedom House data ......................................................................................... 66-67; 256; 272-281 Political terror data ........................................................................................................... 69-71; 259 Polity IV data .................................................................................................................................72 1 Chapter One - Introduction Since its 1959 revolution, Cuba has played not only an integral role in Latin American history, but also in the overall story of global international relations. The realities concerning the Cuban revolutionary government’s treatment of human rights have been sharply contested. Former American Foreign Service Officer Catherine Moses quoted an “intellectual” in her text Real Life in Castro’s Cuba: “The island is the most beautiful prison on earth” (quoted in Moses 2000, 73). Fidel Castro believed his country to be a “small island of freedom and dignity” (quoted in Coltman 2003, 280). The human rights reality in Cuba, prison or bastion of freedom, is much closer to the former than the latter in recent decades; in its report “Worst of the Worst 2012: The World’s Most Repressive Societies,” Freedom House found that for 23 years between 1973 and 2012, Cuba scored a 7, the worst possible “Combined Average Rating” with regard to political rights and civil liberties (Dunham et al. 2012, 1-8, 13).1 Between 1973 and 2012, only five other nations (North Korea, Somalia, Burma, Tibet, and Libya) spent more years with that worst-possible combined average rating of 7; Sudan had the same number of years as Cuba did (Dunham et al. 2012, 7).2 “[A] lengthy list of human rights violations” has therefore run parallel to the story of Cuba and the way its government treats its citizens (Erikson 2009, 57).3 These “egregious human rights violations committed in the name of revolutionary ardor” (Latell 2005, 205) motivate this study which measures the degree to which internal 1 According to data accompanying Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World 2016” report, the first year that countries’ political rights and civil liberties were covered was 1972 (Freedom House 2016b). 2 See also Freedom House’s “Worst of the Worst 2011: The World’s Most Repressive Societies” (Piano et al. 2011). 3 Freedom House’s ratings will be explored in greater detail in Chapters Three and Five. 2 Cuban human rights advocacy movements, organizations and activists have been successful in influencing change in the Cuban government's respect for and protection of human rights.4 The search is for hope, not blind but well-reasoned and backed by quantitative and qualitative evidence, that eventually the Cuban people will live freely. This study aims to discover if internal Cuban human rights activists have impacted human rights in Cuba from 1959 until the present day. This study will ascertain this through a historical, quantitative and qualitative review of these years. This study focuses especially on two actors whose work has been particularly significant: Oswaldo Payá (1952-2012) and Yoani Sánchez (1975- ). Their respective backgrounds and strategies to enhance the protection of human rights in Cuba are notably different. Payá’s efforts were distinctly political; his Varela Project gathered “more than 10,000 signatures in 2002 to call for a constitutional referendum” which “advocated democratic reform, respect for human rights, and freedom for all political prisoners” (Human Rights Watch 2012). Sánchez, a dissident blogger who also makes use of Twitter’s unique social media platform, is less political; Sánchez’s posts, as phrased by Baruch College professor Ted Henken, “are not political harangues,” but “vignettes, the day-in-the-life struggle that everyday people can relate to” (quoted in Forero 2013a). While their approaches to calling attention to the human rights realities in Cuba differ, they, along with the rest of the dissident community, shared and share a common conviction, that, as phrased by Damián J. Fernández, “the State has not respected the rights of the individual” (Fernández 2003, 601). Their stories, work, and mutual goals (“a pluralistic, inclusive Cuba,” as Sánchez said during her March 20, 2013 lecture at 4 Outside actors, such as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, are not measured. 3 Georgetown University) convened dramatically in 2012, and this confluence highlights and encapsulates “the suppression of civil liberties” in the Castros’ Cuba (Quirk 1995, 825).5 The title of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour’s blog on March 21, 2013 called Sánchez “A thorn in the Castro brothers’ side;” this is a fair description of Payá as well. Writing in October 2003, Tim Padgett (Brenner et al. 2008, 106-7) noted Payá’s prominence in the history of the Cuban dissidence: Oswaldo Payá, in fact, is the first Cuban dissident ever to be compared with the likes of Lech Walesa. It’s a premature likening, to be sure— especially since Castro essentially put Payá’s top management out of commission last March with one of his most severe crackdowns in decades. But the fact that Castro did not jail Payá—even Castro realizes what an international outcry that would provoke—is in itself proof that Payá is an unprecedented irritant for the Cuban regime.6 Payá eventually paid for his advocacy with his life; he was killed (along with a second Cuban activist, Harold Cepero) in a July 22, 2012 car accident, the nature of which has been vigorously disputed by the driver of the car that day (Spanish citizen Angel Carromero), a third passenger in the vehicle (Swedish citizen Jens Aron Modig), and Payá’s family (BBC Mundo 2012a; Oppmann 2012a; Archibold 2013; Diehl 2012, 2013; The Washington Post 2013). The Cuban Interior Ministry said in a report that the car in 5 Raúl “provisionally” took over in 2006; Fidel “definitively” gave up the presidency in 2008 (Latell 2013, 34). 6 For historical context, Gaddis (2007, 196-197, italics in original) described Walesa as “the young Polish electrician who stood outside the locked gate of the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk one day in August, 1980— with the pope’s picture nearby—to announce the formation of Solidarność, the first independent trade union ever in a Marxist-Leninist country.” 4 which Payá, Carromero, Cepero and Modig were traveling “left the road and collided against a tree” as a result of Carromero’s “lack of attention to the control of the vehicle, the excess of speed and the incorrect decision to apply the brakes in an abrupt manner on a slippery surface” (Ravsberg 2012a). Carromero maintained in a Washington Post interview (2013) that the group had been followed since the start of their trip, with the trailing car switching
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