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In Havana, a field of flags
obscures US messages on democracy
The
Boston Globe,
May 16, 2006.
HAVANA -- At night, when all Havana seems
to be out for an evening stroll, the austere
office building that serves as an outpost
of US diplomats turns into a billboard.
Letters scroll slowly across the facade,
casting a bright red glow. Clumps of restless
teenagers plunk their bottles of Havana
Club rum on the sidewalk and stare up, their
mouths agape. Couples unlace hands and gawk.
Some nights they read the insights of comedian
George Burns translated into Spanish: ''How
sad that all the people who would know how
to run this country are driving taxis or
cutting hair." Other times, questions
are posed: ''In a free country you don't
need permission to leave the country. Is
Cuba a free country?"
On a typical evening, the billboard gets
only a small audience -- the few who venture
within a block or two of its glowing letters.
More people might have seen the messages,
but President Fidel Castro countered the
US move with one of his own.
Castro's government planted a field of
flags on tall poles -- 148 in all -- in
front of the US building, which holds the
offices of the US Interests Section, a diplomatic
post one notch below an embassy. The flags
block the view of the billboard from the
heavy traffic along a seaside highway in
central Havana. The flags loom over an outdoor
amphitheater already freighted with symbolism:
Its name is Anti-Imperialism Park.
Trumping the United States by obscuring
its billboard delighted some neighbors.
''That Fidel, he's smart, very smart,"
said Luis Garcia, a retiree who lives nearby.
Others barely noticed.
''I don't have time to read signs,"
said Osman Gonzalez, a state-employed busboy
who has a clear view of the Interests Section
building from his ground-level apartment.
''You've got one kid screaming. You've got
to get dinner on the table. Who can bother
with this stuff?"
US diplomats acknowledge that the flags
have limited their audience, even posting
a message that read: ''Who fears the billboard?
Why block it?" But even if only a few
people see the billboard and talk about
its messages, something has been accomplished,
Eric Watnik, a spokesman for the State Department,
said in a telephone interview from Washington.
''Castro gets angered by the truth, yet
they call their revolution a revolution
of ideas. So, we're battling with ideas,"
Watnik said. ''The people of Cuba aren't
able to enjoy freedom of expression -- we're
bringing them positive messages from the
free world."
The saga of the billboard, which debuted
on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with snippets
of the civil rights icon's ''I Have a Dream"
speech, is not without precedent. Two years
ago, the US Interests Section in Havana
riled Castro's government by putting up
a Christmas display with a lighted Santa
Claus, a Frosty the Snowman, and a huge
''75" -- a reference to the number
of dissidents jailed in a crackdown the
year before. Not to be outdone, Castro put
up billboards with swastikas and images
of US abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq.
But the scale of the latest face-off dwarfs
past propaganda clashes.
The US billboard has 5-foot-tall letters,
which are displayed on electronic screens
inside the building's windows, and scrolls
messages for hours at a time.
The Cuban counteroffensive is massive,
with each huge black flag featuring a white
star commemorating what Castro's government
calls victims of nearly a century and a
half of uprisings against outside forces,
dating to battles against Spanish colonialists
and spanning his 47-year rule.
In an interview, Cuba's Senate president,
Cuban Senate President Ricardo Alarcon --
considered by many specialists Cuba experts
to be the nation's third-most powerful figure
behind Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul
Castro -- called the US billboard ''absurd."
The US messages are diverse. There is cheeky
commentary: zany musician Frank Zappa opining
that ''communism doesn't work because people
like to own stuff." There are biting
observations, such as George Orwell's satirical
take on communism from ''Animal Farm":
''All animals are equal, but some animals
are more equal than others." And there
are lengthy document dumps, such as the
UN United Nations' Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, with lines such as ''Everyone
has the right to leave any country, including
his own, and to return to his country."
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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