HEMISPHERE FOCUS Volume XI, Issue 18 April 30, 2003 CUBA ALERT Cuban Dissidents Under Siege Brian Latell OVERVIEW • After initially demanding the death penalty in some instances, Cuban authorities announced that all 78 of the dissidents charged had been convicted. They immediately began serving prison terms ranging from six to 28 years. • Fidel Castro’s calculus about how to deal with the dissident community probably began changing in the aftermath of Jimmy Carter’s visit to the island last year. • By March he had grown gravely concerned over the surprising success and international resonance of the Varela Project, the first truly threatening grass roots threat to his authority on the island since the earliest years of his revolution. • Harsh repression of dissidents will continue although it will probably be conducted more discreetly and with less propaganda fanfare. • Yet the first time since the early years of the Cuban revolution, Castro and his hard-line advisers are unable either to decapitate opposition forces or to drive them underground or into exile. ferry were executed after similarly expedited trials. And The campaign against internal opposition launched last month by Fidel Castro’s regime is among the most inhumane almost as quickly, the Council of State, in effect Cuba’s court of the numerous crackdowns conducted during the more of last resort, dutifully upheld those death penalties as than 44 years he has ruled Cuba. Beginning in mid March, “absolutely just.” One prominent dissident described these Cuban security personnel, often acting violently, rounded up events as the “most intense wave of repression in Cuban more than 100 men and women associated with groups history.” committed to peaceful democratic change on the island. In every case, the incarcerated dissidents had endeavored peacefully and judiciously to encourage a gradual democratic These pacifist critics of Castro’s regime were subjected to evolution in Cuba. They are leaders of the Varela Project who hasty, sequestered trials and denied any semblance of due gathered signatures on a petition seeking greater democracy, process. After initially demanding the death penalty in some independent “journalists,” part time librarians, human rights instances, Cuban authorities announced that all 78 of the activists, and leaders of labor and other groups seeking free dissidents charged had been convicted. They immediately expression and association in a society where none is allowed. began serving prison terms ranging from six to 28 years. At They formed dissident groups such as the Assembly to about the same time three young men accused of hijacking a Promote Civil Society, the Christian Liberation Movement, Americas Program • Center for Strategic and International Studies 1800 K Street, NW • Washington, DC 20006 • Tel: (202) 775-3207 • Fax: (202) 775-3199 • http://www.csis.org and the Unitary Council of Cuban Workers. Castro’s economic issues, received the same harsh sentence even crackdown was intended to crush these movements before though a survey of many of his commentaries circulated in they gathered any more momentum. And as its security the United States shows that his writings were entirely devoid forces fanned out across the island, the regime unleashed a of threatening or confrontational language. torrent of anti-American rhetoric laboring to blame its actions on US policy and the actions of American diplomats in Havana. A typical example of the independent journalists’ peaceful, pro-democracy pleadings was published in the Washington Post on April 16, three weeks after its author, Marcelo Lopez The Growing Dissident Movement Banobre, was sentenced to a 15 year prison term. In this article at least, the author’s dissidence was in reporting that Although still relatively small in numbers, these activist most Cubans he knew supported the US-led war in Iraq groups have grown exponentially over the last few years, despite the Castro regime’s virulent denunciations of it. probably to the highest levels since the early or mid 1960s. Lopez Banobre also asserted that the situation in Cuba had This has been most evident in the efforts of Osvaldo Paya become “volatile.” He revealed in the Post that a physician and his Varela Project. Despite the government’s success in friend in a provincial city had been detained; apparently his confiscating and destroying a large number of Varela’s crime had been to establish an independent medical petitions, organizers were able nonetheless to gather between association. 20,000 and 30,000 signatures of Cuban’s favoring democracy. Before the crackdown, independent librarians and journalists were in touch with larger and larger numbers of Cubans, and The regime employed brutal tactics as it arrested and tried were attracting considerable international support and these dissidents, allowing no foreign observers or families in backing. The net result, unprecedented since Castro won the courtrooms. After Espinosa Chepe’s imprisonment, his power in 1959, is that a truly independent, vigorous, and wife, the independent journalist Miriam Leiva, wrote in a internationally respected civil society has coalesced. commentary published abroad how their life’s savings had been confiscated by government security officers when they raided their home to apprehend him. She also says that prison Many of the incarcerated practiced as “journalists.” Certainly authorities have denied her ailing husband necessary medical they were not reporters in any traditional sense because in attention. As the numbers, influence, and determination of Cuba no alternative media of any type are allowed. Rather, these independent commentators has grown, hardliners in the what they do is to pen commentaries on developments in regime obviously became progressively more concerned and communities around the island and on economic, social, and influential with Fidel Castro. historical issues. These articles are typically transmitted abroad by phone or FAX, and then circulated to generally small and specialized audiences outside of Cuba. Until Perhaps the most onerous of the official repression has been Castro’s crackdown, the journalists had evaded prosecution its focus on extirpating the independent library movement on by walking a fine line. They eschewed language that the the island. About 30 of the imprisoned dissidents were regime easily could characterize as counterrevolutionary or custodians of small lending libraries in their homes. Their inflammatory. They refrained from personal attacks on crimes were to invite neighbors and others to borrow books, Castro and other leaders and artfully veiled their mild many donated from abroad. Castro and other regime officials criticisms of government policies in innocuous and often have said almost nothing in public about why these, the most literary terms. pacifist and seemingly non-threatening of the dissidents, have been treated so harshly. These journalists survived --in fact they multiplied-- in spite of the tough scrutiny of Cuban security and the penetration Reasons for Crackdown of their ranks by informers and agents. One of the most prominent of them, who often visited the US diplomatic At least four principal factors explain why Fidel Castro, with mission in Havana and praised diplomats there for the advice of newly influential hardliners in his regime, encouraging peaceful opposition to Castro, was actually a decided to launch this reign of terror when he did. seasoned Cuban intelligence agent. He testified against Probably most importantly, he became convinced that the genuinely dissident journalists at their trials. policy of watchful tolerance and penetration of the dissident movements that he had followed over the last several years was no longer working. One of the most prominent of the journalists, the distinguished, 57 year old poet Raul Rivero, was sentenced to By March he had grown gravely concerned over the 20 years. Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who generally wrote about surprising success and international resonance of the Varela Americas Program • Center for Strategic and International Studies 1800 K Street, NW • Washington, DC 20006 • Tel: (202) 775-3207 • Fax: (202) 775-3199 • http://www.csis.org Project, the first truly threatening grass roots threat to his leaders who are free of the kinds of tripwire activities or authority on the island since the earliest years of his statements that would provoke their imprisonment. Yet at revolution. the same time, Castro will be reluctant to move against Paya, and a few other dissident leaders, because of their The Iraq war provided a convenient moment to implement international standing. extreme policies at a time when the international media were less likely to report on developments in Cuba. And no doubt Castro also concluded that significant relief Thus, Paya’s publicized observation that the crackdown “is from the US economic embargo was unlikely during the next not the end of peaceful opposition” is certain to prove two years at least. He realized that, despite his often accurate. Yet the first time since the early years of the Cuban ingenious tactics aimed at winning over US congressional and revolution, Castro and his hard-line advisers are unable either public opinion for unilateral measures to reduce or eliminate to decapitate opposition forces or to drive them underground the embargo, the Bush administration would prevail. Thus, or into exile. The new dissident phenomenon is unlike any with his most important bilateral objective out of reach,