|
By Angel Pablo Polanco.
The Miami Herald,
December 24, 2002.
HAVANA -- Dissidents in Cuba and exiles in the United States say their
dispersion is good.
''We are not divided, we are multiplying,'' they say, to justify the
disproportionate number of opposition groups in Cuba -- more than 300 in a
country of some 12 million people.
They also argue that the diversity of ways in which they combat Castro is an
early exercise of democracy.
With those euphemisms, they try unsuccessfully to ignore the ugly side of
their history, the schism that has affected Cubans since their first
independence war in 1868.
Caudillismo -- the strongman syndrome -- is another of their secular
ailments. Some people would rather be the head of a mouse than the tail of a
lion and create their own organizations, even if only with two or three
associates. This fire is also fanned by social-democrat and liberal winds that
blow from Europe and the United States.
Such political currents help develop civilian society and disseminate
democratic ideas. But they also encourage division by promoting the lifting of
the embargo and a dialogue with Castro, issues on which most oppositionists
split.
Oscar Elías Biscet, for example, a political prisoner with strong
domestic backing, firmly supports the embargo. ''If the international community
had acted toward Cuba in the same manner it did toward South Africa, our country
would have been freed long ago,'' he said after his release in October.
(Editor's note: Biscet was arrested again on Dec. 6 while attempting to meet
other dissidents. On Dec. 19, he was taken to Combinado del Este, a Havana
maximum-security prison.)
Biscet, 42 and a physician, is a human-rights defender who rejects any
accommodation with Castro.
Moderate dissidents, who favor the foreign leftist currents mentioned above,
think quite differently. That these partisans exist is beneficial. But to
attempt to practice democracy while Castro is in power is a mistake. Diversity
-- God's creation -- exists independently of man. Yet the democratic system has
to be built, and you can't mix one concept with the other, no matter how well
the people get along.
Wanting to people do whatever comes to mind to each is like trying to topple
Castro with spitballs.
History has shown that walls can be breached if many people strike on the
same spot. And if the purpose of oppositionists and dissidents is to gain their
freedom and consolidate a democratic system, the time has come for them to join
ranks and march down the same road.
Luckily, those who yesterday followed the path of violence today admit --
with an honesty that does them proud -- that that's not the way to victory. For
those who opted for the failed path of dialogue with the dictator, the honorable
thing to do is to admit the same. And if we assume that those options --
violence and dialogue -- fail, the only path left for Cubans is peaceful civil
disobedience, a form of struggle that the Castro regime has not defeated.
However, civil disobedience means more than staging street demonstrations.
It also means finding the most suitable method of struggle and preparing to
advance down that road. Because, to achieve freedom,the opposition must first
carry out a conscience-raising campaign person to person.
This project, in time, can mobilize thousands of people who support the
regime publicly but in reality do what they can against the system and wait for
more probability of success before joining the struggle.
''These are not dreams,'' stresses Rogelio Menéndez Díaz, one
of the advocates of civil disobedience.
''In any case,'' says Biscet, "they will come true, like those of
Gandhi and Martin Luther King.''
Angel Pablo Polanco is an independent journalist in Havana.
| 
