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In
jail or free, dissidents determined to stay
By Lydia Chavez. Posted on Thu,
Sep. 25, 2003 in The
Miami Herald.
A little more than a year ago, poet and journalist
Raúl Rivero wrote that he refused to let
America's embargo against Cuba define the international
debate over the fate of the island's 11 million
people. ''In this country, the real blockade,
the one that affects the daily life of the people
is the internal governing system,'' he declared.
Since then, Rivero has endured his own private
blockade.
In March, the Cuban government arrested Rivero
and 27 other independent journalists. By April,
all had been sentenced to 14 to 27 years in prison.
The journalists were part of a sweep that turned
75 Cubans -- including librarians, writers and
other professionals -- into political prisoners.
For Rivero and journalists who smuggled their
missives abroad, it was their insistence on writing
what they saw and felt that put them in jail.
That fidelity to the truth could now kill them.
Rivero and journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, 62,
are both ill, their families tell visitors. Rivero,
who has lost much weight, has circulatory problems,
and Espinosa suffers from a liver disease.
Castro must realize that even if he relents and
sets Rivero and others free, they are likely to
stay in Cuba. Rivero has long understood that
Castro may be the Father of the Cuban Revolution,
but that the revolution's children are increasingly
restive. Castro can deny their simple truths like
a Cuban King Lear, but Rivero and others persist.
They witness. They write.
Over the years, the authorities picked up Rivero,
questioned him, harassed him, and tried to nudge
him off the island. But Rivero stayed. Others
did, too.
When I visited Cuba in 2001 with a group of students
reporting on the island, one of them, Ezequiel
Minaya, spent his days talking to Rivero and other
writers. My student asked why Rivero stayed and
he replied with the mantra he lived: "Why
should I leave? This is my country.''
For years, Castro has blamed internal problems
on the U.S. trade embargo. But writers such as
Rivero and his fellow political prisoners, as
well as those dissidents who are not in jail,
refuse to let Castro off so easily. They don't
want to leave Cuba; they want to redefine it.
More than 30,000 Cubans signed the Varela petition
requesting a referendum on basic rights. The international
community is listening, and the arrests and detentions
have only made them pay more attention.
Jailed or freed, Rivero will not go away. In
2000, he wrote about a poetry contest in Cuba
run by the dissident group Reflection. It was
clear from the entries that Castro was failing
to control his island's imagination. Rivero must
still take pleasure in the poem by Nestor Le liebre
Camue of Santiago de Cuba.
"Don't plunge into the sea
for the love of God.
Wait. A fascinating brightness
Is rising from the land.''
To end here, however, would fail Rivero. Cubans
are known for managing humor in the worst situations.
I imagine that Rivero would want to end with a
diary entry smuggled out by his fellow journalist
and prison mate Manuel Vázquez Portal.
The Vázquez diary is posted on the website
for the Committee to Protect Journalists -- www.cpj.org
'Now, like T.S. Eliot, I can say, 'April is the
cruelest month.' April 4 is a bad day for me.
On April 4, my mother gave me 18 knocks on the
head for joining the Young Pioneers (the communist
youth organization) without her permission. This
last April 4, they gave me 18 years for writing
without permission. The first time I was a child,
this second I'm an old man. It seems repression
does not work; either that or I'm very stubborn.''
Lydia Chávez is professor of journalism
at the University of California at Berkeley.
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