Vanessa Bauza. The
Sun-Sentinel. Published April 1, 2001.
HAVANA -- In his sparsely decorated third-floor apartment, sandwiched
between two beds in a back room, Raul Rivero types his dispatches on an Olivetti
Lettera 25 given to him by a Spanish journalist after the state police seized
his typewriter.
As one of the island's leading independent journalists, Rivero cannot
publish his stories, dappled with ink stains and correction fluid, in Cuba.
Instead, they find their way to a half-dozen newspapers around the world via fax
machine or, more often, through dictation. "Sometimes I consider myself
more of a dictator than a writer," he said, savoring the pun.
In Cuba, where all official media is controlled by the government, Rivero is
persona non grata. In 1995, he founded CubaPress, one of about 30 independent
news agencies on the island that publish abroad and post stories on the Internet
mostly relating to dissidents and questioning the government's official reports.
Rivero said he is heartened by the growing number of foreign media allowed to
work on the island, including the Sun-Sentinel, which opened a Havana bureau
earlier this year.
However, he considers it a partial victory considering the vast majority of
Cubans here have no access to news reports published abroad, including his own.
Rivero's career has come full circle.
A member of the University of Havana's first graduating class of journalists
after the 1959 revolution, Rivero, 55, once worked as the Moscow correspondent
for the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina. He doesn't remember the exact moment he
broke from the government, but describes it as a series of disheartening
instances, when he realized he had become "a simple messenger for the
propaganda machine."
"More than censorship, what works here is self-censorship," he
said. "It is not necessary to censor a journalist because they know what
they need to say."
After breaking his ties with the state-controlled media, Rivero, and nine
other independent journalists penned a letter in which they asked, among other
things, for freedom of the press. Now, a decade later, Rivero is the only one in
the group who has not left the island.
Rivero has been detained several times, especially when the state police try
to prevent dissident meetings. But, he has never been charged with any of the
numerous crimes -- from "dangerousness" to "disrespect" --
that other dissidents have been slapped with.
Currently, Cuba has one jailed journalist, Rivero said. Bernardo Arevalo
Padron is serving a six-year sentence for defaming Castro and Council of State
Vice President Carlos Lage in an interview with a Miami-based radio station.
In an interview this month, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque defended the
state-controlled media as a necessary product of an economic war with the United
States. Deviating from the government line, he said, would be akin to an
American newspaper siding with Japan during World War II.
"Is it possible, with the conditions in Cuba today, for there to be a
[Cuban] media outlet which defends the blockade?" Perez Roque asked a group
of foreign editors and reporters.
"No, it's not possible," he answered. "Those are the
constraints of our current situation."
Rivero often finds himself in the awkward position of being criticized on
both sides of the Florida Straits: In Havana, he is viewed as a tool of U.S.
imperialism, and in Miami he has been disparaged for supporting a reunion
between Elián González and his father and opposing the U.S.
embargo against Cuba.
"There are always extreme positions on both sides," he said from
his living room, overlooking the rooftops of central Havana. "In neither
place do I think they are absolutely right."
To Rivero, a foreign audience is a bittersweet reminder of his limitations
at home. He would rather be published in Cuba or have his stories broadcast on
the airwaves of Havana's radio stations.
"If they let me talk for 10 minutes on the radio I would never call
anyone again outside the island."
Vanessa Bauza can be reached at vbauza@sun-sentinel.com
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