|
Jorge Ramos. Posted on Mon, Dec. 16, 2002 in
The Miami Herald.
Cuba's main export product has been its exiles -- about two million Cubans
are dispersed throughout the planet. And the main consumer goods on the island
are fear and repression. Nobody told me that. I saw it in Cuba.
This shouldn't surprise us. Cuba has been ruled by a dictatorship since 1959
and lacks multi-party elections or freedom of the press. In Cuba, human rights
are violated daily; dissidents are frequently arrested, tortured and killed; any
effort toward democratization, such as the Varela Project, is crushed; and only
one person -- Fidel Castro -- makes decisions for everyone else.
Thus, it's noteworthy when the Cuban government tries to hide from the world
the repression that it imposes on its citizens and instead offers the false
image of a ''Cuba light,'' decaffeinated and innocent.
At the recent International Book Fair in Guadalajara, México, the
guest of honor was Cuba. The Castro regime wanted to take advantage of the event
-- the largest in the world for Spanish-language publications -- to feature the
writers and artists protected by the dictatorship and to hide the terrible
living conditions of intellectuals and critics who want to express themselves
freely.
That's why Cuba sent an enormous delegation of 600 to Guadalajara. None of
the Cuban writers and functionaries who participated in the fair could do so
without supporting the dictatorship, tacitly or openly. Not one dared to
criticize Castro publicly.
I understand that the fair organizer's legitimate purpose is simply to
feature one country every year and to promote books and reading. But I had to
laugh at the titles of some of the conferences -- ''The cinema, drama and
literature in Cuba,'' or ''Contemporary Cuban poetry'' -- when political
prisoners and dissidents are literally rotting in Cuban jails.
Cuba, which wants to promote an image of a literary and educational
superpower, is in reality a world champion in the incarceration of political
dissidents.
In the first half of 2002, there were at least 230 political prisoners in
Cuban jails, according to Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz, of the
Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation. But
these figures are incomplete.
''There is very little information about military prisons in Cuba,'' said
Ricardo Bofill, who spent 14 years in Cuban prisons. Besides, several political
prisoners have been killed. ''I was witness to three executions,'' added Bofill,
an activist in the Miami-based Cuban Committee for Human Rights.
''If you add up those who died in the Florida Straits, in Angola, in Central
America and the Southern Cone, [the Castro regime] is responsible for the deaths
of thousands of people,'' said Frank Calzón of the Center for a Free
Cuba, a Washington, D.C., group.
We're talking here about the same government that wanted to sell its books
and ''culture'' in Guadalajara.
Just so there will be no doubt, meet Cuban political dissident Juan Carlos
González Leiva, 37, who has been in prison since March 4. González
Leiva is blind. A while ago he managed to surreptitiously send from prison --
the Operations Unit of State Security in Holguín -- a message saying: "I'm
being tortured, physically and emotionally, by the State Security. I am sending
this S.O.S. to the world, asking it to do something for myself and my
brothers.''
Officially, González Leiva has been charged with ''public disorder,
contempt, resistance and disobedience,'' as stated in Arraignment No. 28 of
2002, issued by the Provincial Organ of Penal Processing in Ciego de Avila. The
real reason why he was imprisoned: He shouted "Down with Fidel!''
González Leiva's life is in danger. Not just because his case makes
the Castro regime look bad -- something that Amnesty International and several
U.S. and European human-rights organizations are well aware of -- but also
because he has been on a hunger strike since Sept. 4. At present he weighs
barely 99 pounds. He wears black, as a sign of resistance.
Like other writers and journalists, I also participated in the Guadalajara
book fair. But as I heard the writers from the Cuban dictatorship insist on
discussing literature and poetry, I thought about González Leiva and the
other political prisoners in Cuba.
We must not fall for that tripe. We must unmask a regime that tries to sell
books abroad but dispenses death, repression and torture at home. That's the
dictatorship's real fair.
Jorge Ramos is news anchor for Univision and columnist for El Nuevo
Herald. | 
