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Seeing no evil in
Cuba
By Susana Barciela, Editorial
Board member. sbarciela@herald.com. Posted
on Fri, Jan. 23, 2004 in The
Miami Herald.
The remarks of Raúl Taleb, Argentina's
ambassador in Havana, are an insult to Cubans
who suffer human-rights abuse first hand.
''Human rights are not violated in Cuba,
at least not more or less than in other
countries,'' the ambassador said last week
to La Nación, a Buenos Aires daily.
I wondered what Blanca Reyes would think.
Her husband, poet Raúl Rivero, is
serving a 20-year prison term for the crime
of expressing his views in columns published
abroad, including in The Herald. I telephoned
her in Havana and read Ambassador Taleb's
comments:
''Could freedom of the press be restricted?
Yes. Could the existence of a single party
mean that its system cannot be called democratic?
It's possible. But that's a decision supported
by a large sector of the population that
is pleased with the '59 revolution.''
Dissidents railroaded
Ms. Reyes didn't mince words. Mr. Taleb
''doesn't know my country. He knows the
elites,'' she said. ''He drives through
the streets in his air-conditioned car,''
moving in the rarefied world of foreign
diplomats. ''He can talk about that Cuba,
a country that I don't know.''
In October, six months after her husband
and 74 other political prisoners were railroaded
into prison for lending books and for other
''subversive'' activities, Argentine Foreign
Minister Rafael Bielsa visited Havana. He
rebuffed a request to meet Ms. Reyes and
other wives. Instead, Mr. Bielsa strolled
Havana with his Cuban counterpart, sightseeing
and sampling ice cream. Under President
Néstor Kirchner, Argentina returned
to the morally repugnant see-no-evil approach
to Cuba that is popular in the region.
The Argentines, as Ms. Reyes suggested,
need only read her husband's indictment
to see the lies. What dangerous weapons
did state security confiscate? Poetry books,
press clips, a radio, a recorder, a laptop,
audio and video cassettes with ''information
destined to subvert the economic, political
and social system of Cuba.'' What bunk.
Truth is the weapon feared most by Cuba's
regime.
Free in spirit
''I don't even have the right of reply,''
Ms. Reyes said. ''I would like to have my
comments published in my own country.''
But Cuba's state-owned media refuse her
submissions. ''Even this conversation is
tapped,'' she said. ''How can Mr. Taleb
say that human rights aren't violated when
I am not even permitted to visit my son
in Miami?
''Raúl is in a small cell; I am
in a large one.''
Yet even in prison, Mr. Rivero's spirit
remains free. ''I think of you often and
write a lot -- and excellent poetry,'' he
wrote to Ms. Reyes. ''A poetry with great
interior rhythm, freed from hate and earthly
foolishness, clean and serene, almost celestial
in human themes, not thinking of the verse
as a weapon, rather a frozen emotion, love
isolated, an instant of life that one has
been able to capture.''
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