Government pits citizens against outsiders, he says
By Yves Colon. ycolon@herald.com. Published Thursday,
February 1, 2001, in the Miami Herald
The decision to hold two Czech citizens in jail in Cuba, and the resulting
international outcry over their detention, is part of a plan to keep ordinary
Cubans constantly mobilized against outsiders, an expert on the island said.
In that vein, said Marifeli Perez-Stable, President Fidel Castro is asking
Cuban Embassy personnel in Prague to fight to the death and is calling on his
people to take to the streets -- the more so if the issues involve the United
States.
"It's been nonstop since Elián 14 months ago,'' said
Perez-Stable, a visiting professor at Florida International University and the
author of The Cuban Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1993). "They've
been holding televised roundtables, where the U.S. is the subject of discussion.
Every Saturday they hold a forum in a different city. They're constantly
mobilizing people, which is exhausting and expensive from a country that has so
few resources.''
DIFFERENT PATHS
The decaying relationship between Cuba and the Czech Republic, and how
socialism has taken different paths in those countries, will be the subject of
Perez-Stable's talk at 7 p.m. today at the Wolfsonian-Florida International
University, 1001 Washington Ave., in Miami Beach.
Kate Rawlinson said the museum invited Perez-Stable to talk to complement an
exhibit of Czech graphic designer Karel Teige in a show titled Dreams and
Disillusion.
"We're often looking for connections and wanted to make the exhibit
relevant to the Miami community,'' said Rawlinson, the museum's educational
program manager.
Although Teige has been dead for 50 years, "issues of political freedom
and freedom of expression, human rights, issues he dealt with in his work, are
pretty much alive today,'' Rawlinson said.
Then, Ivan Pilip and Jan Bubenik showed up in Havana earlier this month. "Now
it won't be strange for the public to hear Cuba and the Czech Republic mentioned
in the same breath,'' Perez-Stable said.
The Cuban government has accused the two Czechs with subversion, accusing
them of holding "meetings of a conspiratorial nature with members of
subversive Cuban groups'' and of being U.S. agents. The leader of the Czech
senate was meeting with Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana on Wednesday
about the fate of the two Czechs.
Perez-Stable, 51, who's working on a new book about the political history of
Cuba, will touch on the Cold War, then focus on how the Czechs transformed their
system from socialism to democratic capitalism while the Cuban leadership dug in
its heels.
A MISTAKE
Arresting the two Czechs may have been a mistake, Perez-Stable said,
especially since the International Union of Parliamentarians is scheduled to
meet in Cuba in April.
"It would be a crisis of international proportion if they're tried and
condemned,'' Perez-Stable said.
"It would be hard to imagine parliamentarians from democratic countries
going to Cuba if this doesn't change.''
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 