The
Conscience of Cuba
By Duncan M. Currie. Published
on Wednesday, October 08, 2003 in The
Harvard Crimson.
"In the 16 months I have been confined in
this dreadful place, I have suffered the most
savage physical and psychological tortures...Also,
the constant sounds of chains and gates and the
frequent cries and pleas of women prisoners that
get lost in the echo of the cold walls convert
this place into a Dantesque inferno that I have
tolerated only by the mercy and grace of God.
The more they torture me, the more I seek God,
the more I cling to the feet of Christ, who is
the Way, the Truth, and the Life, not death."
Those words come from a statement released by
blind Cuban lawyer Juan Carlos González
Leiva this past July. Through his wife, Marítza
Calderin Columbié, he has been smuggling
out such messages ever since his incarceration
in March 2002. In his most recent letter, dated
Sept. 16, he reports that prison officials are
"releasing chemical or biological substances
[in his cell]
that are making me progressively
very ill."
Most readers have probably never heard of González
Leiva. Indeed, the dissidents who languish in
Castro's jails typically remain nameless and faceless
to the American public, despite being 90 miles
from our shores. For every Armando Valladares-the
Cuban poet who was held for 22 harrowing years
before an international campaign helped gained
his release in 1982-there are thousands of other
brave souls whose pleas were never answered. Human-rights
groups estimate that there are currently more
than 300 "prisoners of conscience" in
Cuba.
Someone who has worked tirelessly on behalf of
these prisoners is Laida Carro, the president
of the Coalition of Cuban-American Women. "I
feel like I'm struggling with them," she
says. "They're very special people, and what
they're going through is hell." Carro stresses
how vitally important it is that their stories
be told. Allow me, then, to briefly share the
story of Juan Carlos González Leiva, along
with that of another awe-inspiring Cuban hero.
González Leiva, 38, is the president of
both the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights and
the Brotherhood for the Independent Blind People
of Cuba. He is also the director of the Ignacio
Agramonte Independent Library. He earned his law
degree (remarkably) while completely blind, but
has been prohibited from practicing ever since
the regime learned of his oppositionist activities.
On March 4, 2002, he organized a peaceful protest
outside the Ciego de Avila city hospital to express
solidarity with an independent journalist, Jesús
Alvarez Castillo, who had been brutally beaten
by Cuban State Security. Along with his fellow
demonstrators, he too was soon attacked by State
Security and clubbed in the head so violently
that it took several stitches to close the wound.
He was subsequently imprisoned in Pedernales,
Holguín, where he remains today without
trial or sentencing. Tortured, poisoned and denied
adequate medical care, González Leiva's
condition is rapidly deteriorating.
Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, 58, is also critically
ill. She is the director of the Cuban Institute
of Independent Economists, founder of the Assembly
to Promote Civil Society in Cuba and the recipient
of the 2002 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists
Award, bestowed by the New York Academy of Sciences.
First jailed in 1997 for co-authoring a paper
critical of the Communist system, she was released
in May 2000-only to be incarcerated again this
past March for meeting with U.S. diplomats and
publicly demanding freedom for Cuban political
prisoners. This time, she was given a 20-year
sentence. I spoke to Martha Roque's sister, Isabel
Roque of Miami, last Friday. Fighting back tears,
Isabel says that isolation, inept medical procedures
and torture have ravaged her sister's health.
She has lost 40 pounds, has developed dangerously
high blood pressure and is slowly dying.
To date, there's been no organized show of support
for González Leiva at Harvard Law School,
and nothing in the economics department for Martha
Roque. In all likelihood, few professors or students
even know their names. The same can undoubtedly
be said for most American universities.
Omar López Montenegro of the Cuban American
National Foundation, himself a founding member
of the Cuban opposition, nonetheless tells me
how effective a campus movement, particularly
one at Harvard, might be in focusing attention
on the prisoners' plight. "The regime always
claims that the 'students of the world' are with
the revolution," Lopez observes, and a student-led
campaign for human rights in Cuba would shatter
these illusions. To that end, Carro suggests creating
"a program whereby students would adopt a
prisoner. Maybe not one student; maybe an organization
at a school." She notes that various Amnesty
International groups have "adopted"
prisoners; among other things, they send them
messages, call their relatives and provide financial
assistance. Carro calls such initiatives "human
sparks of solidarity."
Cuba's jailed dissidents need more of those sparks.
All too often their cause is ignored by Western
journalists and academics. The task of educating
people about Castro's gulag normally falls to
Cuban-American activists and organizations, whose
efforts are as indefatigable as they are invaluable.
As Valladares wrote of Cuba's prisons in his
1986 memoir Against All Hope, "Someday, when
the history of all them is known in detail, mankind
will feel the revulsion it felt when the crimes
of Stalin were brought to light." Until that
day, it's the responsibility of free people everywhere
to ensure that moral titans such as Juan Carlos
González Leiva and Martha Beatriz Roque
Cabello are not forgotten or abandoned.
Duncan M. Currie '04 is a history concentrator
in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate
Wednesdays.
Copyright © 2003, The Harvard
Crimson Inc.
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