By Karen DeYoung. Washington Post Staff Writer. The Washington Post. Sunday, July 16, 2000; Page A01
HAVANA –– Something unprecedented happened last Nov. 1 that Cuba's small community of political dissidents still talks about with amazement. In a televised appearance before a panel of local journalists, President Fidel Castro mentioned their names.
He ridiculed them, called them "counterrevolutionary ringleaders" and accused them of conspiring with U.S. diplomats. But amid a torrent of accusations against the United States that went on for hours, more than three dozen dissidents were publicly identified by name--most for the
first time--to the Cuban people.
November was a high point for dissent here. In addition to the denunciation by Castro, delegates to an international summit infuriated the government by insisting publicly on meeting with some of its opponents.
But there has been an inevitable price to pay. Since then, short-term political detentions are up--more than 200 people were arrested between November and February, according to a dissident tally. Permission to travel abroad has been withheld and the police presence in the streets has increased.
University professors and other government workers are being told to limit outside contacts and to make new professions of faith in the revolution.
After four decades of opposing Cuban communism, the dissident movement acknowledges it has little to show for its efforts. While there have been economic openings and a nascent shift in U.S. political opinion toward Cuba on the outside, these developments have brought no discernible movement
inside Cuba. It remains a country where it is illegal, and costly, to speak, write or gather freely.
And now that the government appears to have been ideologically rejuvenated by the Elian Gonzalez case, "it's clear they are going to take it even further," said human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, dean of the dissidents. "I think it's going to be like the Chinese Cultural
Revolution, tropical style."
Many of Cuba's leading dissidents are considered heroes outside their country. Resolutions are adopted in their names, and awards are bestowed in absentia. Yet here at home, they live a precarious and insular existence--deprived of jobs, and under constant surveillance and threat of arrest. But
the government's most effective tools against them are a system of social isolation and control over the ability of Cubans to communicate with each other.
"This is a scientific dictatorship," said independent journalist Raul Rivero "They don't kill people on the streets like [former dictator Fulgencio] Batista; they don't 'disappear' people like [former Chilean president Augusto] Pinochet."
In a country where neighbor is expected to inform on neighbor, and risk avoidance is a highly developed science, an opposition gathering of a half-dozen people constitutes a major protest. Unlike countries in the former Soviet Bloc, Cuba encourages such troublemakers to leave, and thousands are
granted political refugee status each year by the United States.
There is no Democracy Wall in Cuba, no clandestine press. Without explicit government approval, no Cuban--let alone a declared dissident--is allowed to have a cell phone or a direct-dial overseas line, or access to a photocopying machine, an Internet connection or a satellite dish.
In a dozen interviews, political dissidents, other Cubans estranged from the state system and diplomats said they believe that as many as three-quarters of those who join opposition organizations are government agents or opportunists looking for a quick arrest so they can obtain refugee status
from the United States as a "persecuted" person. According to one long-term dissident leader, there may be no more than 500 genuine opposition activists.
So effective is the government's system for isolating them from their fellow Cubans that dissident politicians and human rights activists agree that the vast majority of the island's 11 million people has never heard of them.
'A Line You Can't Cross'
At midday, when the Caribbean summer heat is most brutal, Marta Beatriz Roque's Havana street is deserted. There are no playing children, no parked cars, no obvious police surveillance.
Inside the dim coolness of her ground floor apartment, Roque is alone. A small, middle-aged economist with a faded blond ponytail, she moved with the caution of poor health. But she has gotten stronger since her nearly three years in prison ended last spring, and she brushed off expressions of
concern to speculate about the state of Cuban dissent.
"There is a line you can't cross, and the opposition goes that far and no further," she said. Roque and three other dissidents crossed it in 1997 when they wrote a treatise called "La Patria es de Todos"--"The Fatherland is for Everyone"--questioning the Communist
Party's accomplishments and proposing political and economic liberalization. All four were sentenced to several years in prison for sedition. One of them, Vladimiro Roca, is still there, serving six years after a closed-door trial in which one of his own Social Democratic Party colleagues was a
government witness against him.
On Saturday, Roque and the two other dissidents who were imprisoned and released earlier this year, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez Manzano, appealed to the government to release Roca. On Friday, they met with a group of U.S. senators, led by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).
Roque, Bonne, Gomez Manzano and Roca became famous internationally as political prisoners. Several dozen East European democracy activists, including Czech President Vaclav Havel and former Polish president Lech Walesa, published an open letter last year in many Western newspapers telling them
to keep hope alive and recalling that "we lived to see something that many of us did not dare to hope for."
But the end of East European totalitarianism came with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a cataclysm that Cuba managed to survive. The answers to Cuba's problems, Roque said, will not come from outside.
Roque's organization, the Institute of Independent Cuban Economists, "consisted of 17 people when I went into prison," she said, "and none of them is left in the country now." Like a number of long-term dissidents, she is dismissive of those who are less committed. "If
somebody comes to me now and says, 'I want to join, but eventually I want to leave the country,' I don't want them."
Her work consists largely of trying to decipher economic reality from official government statistics, and Roque spends her days searching for larger truths in dry public pronouncements on such subjects as sugar production and energy use. Her income is sporadic, including modest fees for selling
economic articles overseas. But Roque said she would much rather talk to her own people.
"My dream is to be published in Granma," the Communist Party newspaper, she said. "To talk over government radio."
Journalists Under Fire
When Rivero's daughter was born, he wrote a poem for her. "You know how when you have a new child, you're all emotional," he recalled sheepishly. "It was all about this beautiful country, this beautiful system. When she was about 16, a friend of hers told me she said she hated me
because I had written such garbage."
Both their lives are different now. His daughter, 25, lives in the United States, and Rivero, 56, once a senior foreign correspondent for the official Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, is a leading "independent" journalist. This means that he does not have a job and is not published in
his own country, that his telephone is tapped and his family is harassed.
"Last Mother's Day, my brother was flying in to visit from Canada," he said. "He had a visa, and he called the day before to tell us what time his plane was arriving. My mother and I went to the airport, but he didn't show. Finally, we got a call at home saying he was being held
by the immigration police. I said at least let his 80-year-old mother see him, so they let her visit him for an hour, but they wouldn't let him give her the medicine he had brought for her. After 24 hours, they put him on a plane back home."
In 1995--four years after he lost his job for signing a letter to Castro asking for the release of political prisoners--Rivero founded CubaPress, an agency to provide independent news about Cuba. Last fall, when he was awarded a special journalism citation by Columbia University, the government
refused to allow him to pick it up. In his Nov. 1 talk, Castro called Rivero a drunk.
CubaPress is one of about 15 self-declared independent news agencies on the island, some with as few as two or three journalists. But Rivero worries about the quality of the work they turn out. "There are only five or six 'real' journalists here, who get published in 'real' journals
outside," he said. "Lots are in anti-Castro bulletins on the Internet, but I say that's not journalism."
"The problem is, we're only used to journalism as propaganda here. We try to have little classes, and get books on journalism theory for them to learn. I tell them, 'Look, as a journalist, you have to write about a lot of things you don't agree with,' " including some things the
government says.
The government makes what he calls real journalism difficult. "You have no car. No Internet. No access to official sources. Investigative journalism is impossible. So, we're left with descriptive journalism . . . trying to get people to talk."
Transmitting information can be as difficult as getting it. Articles are sent outside the country via dictation on telephones belonging to friends or individuals who charge for their use. A story might earn $20 or $30, deposited in an overseas account. The Inter American Press Association, which
last spring started a Cuba page on its Web site (www.sipiapa.org), has agreed to give CubaPress $400 a month to divide among its eight journalists.
Readers outside the country can be difficult to please. "Sometimes the Miami groups attack us for not being sufficiently anti-government," Rivero said. "It's hard to do journalism in an atmosphere of fanaticism on both sides."
But publications sympathetic to Cuban exiles are their primary outlet, which makes it possible for the government to label the journalists tools of Miami. On rare occasions, such as when Pope John Paul II was here in 1998, Madrid's El Pais or Le Monde in Paris might ask Rivero for a story. Most
Latin American publications, although they might be critical of Cuba, are uninterested in the work of the independents. "They think it's only anti-government propaganda," Rivero said.
"The government calls El Nuevo Herald a tool of the [Cuban American] mafia," he laughed, referring to the Spanish-language sister of the Miami Herald that is heavily weighted toward exile views. "But who else is going to publish us? Does The Washington Post want me to write a
column?"
A Cuban Moderate
While some in Miami find Cuba's internal dissidents insufficiently anti-government, Castro claims to see no difference at all between the opposition here and there.
"They are exactly the same thing," he told an interviewer last month. "They both have the same origin and the same leadership. Both are instruments of the U.S. policy against Cuba, both are pro-imperialist, anti-socialist and in favor of annexation."
These attitudes pain Adolfo Fernandez Sainz, another dissident. "Of course, at the bottom of it all, it's the government's fault. . . . But sometimes [the exiles] take a position that is so extreme that they assume anybody of good faith here must be on the side of the government. I don't
like any extremes. We're trying to look for an answer. We're not trying to topple the government, especially from one day to the next. It would be dangerous for the U.S., dangerous for Cuba, dangerous for everyone."
It is an oft-heard refrain in Cuba, even among those publicly at odds with the government. A survey of 1,000 newly arrived Cuban immigrants commissioned by the U.S. government last year found that "the perception of respondents is that the number one fear of a majority [on the island] is
that chaos and violence may prevail" after a precipitous change of government. "For a large minority, the fear is that exiles may return to claim the homes where they live; then, there are fears expressed in relation to losing free health care, jobs and free education."
Fernandez belongs to what, in another country, might be called the political center, favoring definite but gradual change. Opposition parties are tiny groups claiming alliance with the world's large, democratic political groupings such as Christian democrats, social democrats and the
international liberalism with which Fernandez's Democratic Solidarity Party is allied. All of them are illegal in Cuba.
A slight man of 51, with close-cropped graying hair and a serious demeanor, Fernandez lives with his wife in two small, seventh-floor rooms. There is a television set--ubiquitous in all but the most destitute of Cuban homes--a 1940s-vintage refrigerator, an oilcloth-covered table, and a bookcase
with a few Nat King Cole albums and a small collection of books.
Once a government interpreter, Fernandez started to question official policies openly. "I walked up to the edge a million times," he recalled. "And then I walked back. I said to myself, 'I don't want my children to live the way I live.' So I'd go back to the edge again, but I'd
tell myself, 'No, this is going to be a disaster,' and I'd walk back again.
"When that happens to you so many times, you become a psychological disaster yourself," he said. "And finally you break through. For me, it was when I saw a Communist Party member, a woman, speaking on TV. She was talking about a poet, a woman whose work they didn't approve of,
who had been taken by a mob. She said they had made the poet swallow her poems. I thought, how many people does it take to do something like that? One to hold each arm, one to hold each leg, one to hold her nose, and another to stuff it in her mouth? I said, 'That's it, I'm finished.' "
In 1994, he received a note from his workplace saying he was fired. "It didn't say it was for anything political. It said I had had 'relations with third parties.' " For a while, he gave private English lessons, but now he and his wife survive on help from friends inside and outside
the country, and, like other dissidents, on payment for occasional articles published abroad.
The government sees little threat from mini-parties like the one Fernandez belongs to, and usually does not bother with them. Although Democratic Solidarity claims a few thousand supporters, others say most such groups have a core of a few people, surrounded by a dozen or so militants, and an
unknown number of sympathizers. Recruitment is difficult, Fernandez agreed. "People say, 'I like your programs, but I don't want to have any problems.' Or, 'It sounds good, but it's not for me.' "
Two years ago, several like-minded parties put aside their differences and jointly composed a document extolling democracy. Their main focus now is "trying to form a political class," Fernandez said. "It's more intelligent to . . . get ready for the change when it comes, than to
try to provoke it now," he said.
The group tries to publish a monthly State of the Country bulletin, "but we can't really reproduce it." Paper is worth its weight in gold, and "not having a copy machine is a big problem."
Role of the Church
On a recent Sunday morning at St. Agustin's, a Roman Catholic church in west-central Havana, the Rev. Carlos Manuel de Cespedes is celebrating Mass for about 200 people. The subject of the homily was Christian charity, and a donation box at the front of the church is half full of slightly used
shoes and clothing to share with those who do not get regular shipments from overseas Cubans.
After the Mass, a foreign reporter tried to introduce herself and engage the priest in conversation. He shook hands even as he backed away, turned around and left. Earlier in the week, his aide had declined an interview on his behalf, saying it was "inconvenient."
The church keeps the dissidents at arms' length. But many said the Catholic church is the only institution with enough power and resources to pose a serious challenge. Unlike the dissident community, it has a wide membership, a direct way of regularly communicating with people and places to
meet.
During the worst of the economic "special period"--the early 1990s, when Soviet subsidies ended and Cuba's economy shrunk 35 percent practically overnight--the government allowed the church to help fill a vast social services gap. As the economy has improved, however, its maneuvering
room has narrowed. The government has turned down requests to broadcast Masses on state radio, to establish permanent feeding sites for the poor or to purchase food or supplies wholesale. Some requests to bring in more priests from abroad have been denied.
But even as the government tries to keep it under control, the church is systematically preparing a role for itself in a post-Castro Cuba. Over the years, it has slowly "Cubanized" itself from the foreign-dominated institution of the years before Castro's revolution. More recently, it
has stepped up training of religious and lay personnel throughout the country, putting special emphasis on youth membership. Christian Life, a weekly bulletin with thinly veiled defenses of religious freedom, is perhaps the most widely distributed nongovernment publication in the country. Special
Masses for prisoners are frequently held and announced openly.
The church's immediate agenda is fairly modest--expansion of its social program, access to the media, freedom to bring any priests it wishes into the country. Some inside the hierarchy--particularly among the more activist clergy in Pinar del Rio, to the west, and the southeastern city of
Santiago--believe it should be more aggressive.
But for now, the church is playing a waiting game, pushing when it can, retreating when it seems prudent. "The government sees the church as the only real opposition party in the country," said a source close to the hierarchy who refused to be identified. "It's the only dangerous
one."
A 'Man of the Left'
Elizardo Sanchez is surely the dissident who is best known outside Cuba, and is considered by many to be among the bravest after long years of imprisonment and many arrests. His Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation is the most informed, organized and articulate source of
information about political prisoners and the domestic opposition.
While the government denounces him as a right-wing extremist, Sanchez described himself as a "man of the left . . . all my life." He is a socialist who broke with the government in 1967, and says Cuba's best chance for positive change is under the leadership of the 73-year-old Castro.
"Cuba needs democratic reforms to modernize, and . . . a weak government can't do it," he said. Castro "is a symbol of respect and fear for the population. . . . There is no one to replace him, no number two, number three. All of them together don't engender the same combination
of respect and fear."
While it would lose free elections, Sanchez said, the government "has an important level of support. . . . I estimate they'd get about 30 percent, something like the Sandinistas got in Nicaragua. But it would be an important political base."
Such speculation, he acknowledged, is useless because there is no evidence that free elections are about to happen. Castro "doesn't want to substitute reality for his ideological vision," even though "he knows the [ideological] model ends with him."
Change is inevitable, Sanchez said. "Over the medium or the long term, the totalitarian regime will end and we will have a country of free rights. But from now until then, a lot of negative things are going to happen here."
"In Miami, they say this government will fall any week now. But it could last five more years, 10 more years. . . . The opposition is small, weak and isolated, and no internal force is capable of pushing for change. This is not Mexico or Chile, or even China. No outside forces can influence
it, either."
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