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Breaking the "Information
Embargo"
Independent Libraries and a Democratic
Transition in Cuba
By Duncan Currie, National
Review Online, March 2004.
Ramón Humberto Colás Castillo
should be famous in America. A former victim
of political persecution by the Western
Hemisphere's longest-running dictatorship,
his repeated defiance of gunpoint censorship
is worthy of front-page and primetime acclaim.
For his peaceful efforts at promoting liberalization
in his homeland, Colás has suffered
not only vicious beatings but has also been
jailed more than 20 times. It should also
be noted that he is a black man who comes
from a nation of economic- and tourism-apartheid:
the media's ideal story, one would think.
Yet because he is Cuban, and the regime
he challenges is that of Fidel Castro, Colás
remains unknown to the vast majority of
Americans. He's a celebrity in the South
Florida exile community, of course, and
among Cuban-Americans generally. And he's
highly regarded by those journalists, human-rights
activists, and politicians who keep a vigilant
eye on Cuba's pro-democracy movement - but
then, unfortunately, that crowd is a small
one. Colás has lived in the United
States since December 2001, when Cuban authorities
permitted his family to emigrate. He currently
works at the University of Miami's Cuba
Transition Project (about which more later).
Given President Bush's recent creation
of the Commission
for the Assistance to a Free Cuba, and
his stated desire to "continue to break
the information embargo," the administration
will no doubt be looking to Colás
for recommendations and assistance. Indeed,
Colás has done more than just about
anyone over the past six years to subvert
Havana's "information embargo."
He's worked unstintingly to build the foundations
for a democratic Cuba - and many optimists
believe he will someday play a leading role
in the island's eventual shift to pluralism
and freedom.
A trained psychologist and a member of
the Cuban opposition since 1990, his life
was radically changed by Castro's well-publicized
comments at the Havana International Book
Fair in February 1998. Asked by a journalist
about censorship in Cuba, the dictator impulsively
responded, "In Cuba there are no prohibited
books, only those we do not have the money
to buy." When Colás and his
wife, Berta Mexidor Vázquez, an economist,
heard this statement, they immediately seized
on it: Here was an opportunity to establish
independent libraries, free of regime scrutiny,
where Cubans could have unrestricted access
to books, journals, and pamphlets. If the
government objected or intervened, they
reasoned, then the hollowness of Castro's
promises would be exposed. Colás
notes that he'd always been an avid reader
himself, and was keenly aware of the "thirst
for information" - non-propaganda,
that is - which exists in Cuba. He and Mexidor
decided to found the Independent
Libraries of Cuba Project.
The inaugural private library opened a
few weeks later on March 3, 1998, in their
apartment in Las Tunas. It was named the
Félix Varela Independent Library.
Within the next nine months, over a dozen
independent libraries had sprung up across
Cuba. In many cases they were just single
rooms in the homes or apartments of oppositionist
intellectuals and artists. They carried
the works of authors previously unknown
to most Cubans: Friedrich Hayek, George
Orwell, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, to name
just a few, along with such banned Cuban
writers as Guillermo Cabrera Infante and
Reinaldo Arenas. Government officials soon
became wary of the libraries' growing influence;
particularly alarming was the influx of
donated books from abroad. They subsequently
began to bully and threaten the independent
librarians. In addition, they began to monitor
Colás's travel around the island.
Then came the inevitable series of arrests,
persecutions, and expulsions. At all hours
of the night, he received menacing telephone
calls warning that the police would make
him "disappear" if he didn't rein
in the libraries. His wife Berta was even
ordered to divorce him! Finally, on August
23, 1999, government agents raided and ransacked
his home. The family was evicted, their
possessions were taken in two trucks to
a military farm, and Colás was arrested.
Regime authorities told their neighbors
that Colás and his wife were terrorists
and CIA agents, and that they weren't to
have any further contact with them or their
children.
Colás's incarceration that time
was brief: only a night. (He says that his
other 20-odd detentions by Cuban police
were usually for periods each lasting 7-8
days.) But his family was forced to move
in with relatives, and his wife had lost
her job. Also, his kids began to have problems
at school, with teachers informing them
that education was only for those loyal
to the revolution. The other students, meanwhile,
treated them as pariahs. "The regime
doesn't only attack you," Colás
laments. "It attacks your entire family."
While he continued to support the libraries
and pass along news to Radio Martí,
Mexidor and their children grew weary of
the constant harassment. Colás eventually
requested political asylum. He and his family
obtained American visas in October 2000,
and were allowed to leave for Miami just
over a year later.
Since departing Cuba, Colás has
championed the independent libraries' cause
in meetings with the International
Federation of Library Associations (IFLA),
United Nations representatives, various
European heads of state, and, last May,
with President Bush. In August, he attended
IFLA's Berlin conference and spoke with
members of the German foreign ministry.
He also met with leaders of the city's Cuban
exile community, who are forming their own
support group for the independent libraries
project. The trip was "a great success,"
he says, largely because he was able to
invalidate the arguments presented by Castro's
IFLA delegation. Moreover, after meeting
with Colás the German foreign ministry
decided to withdraw its sponsorship of the
2004 Havana International Book Fair, which
was held last month. Colás recently
returned from France, where he laid the
groundwork for emergent partnerships between
the private Cuban libraries and public libraries
in Paris and Strasburg.
Today, there are roughly 200 independent
libraries in Cuba, about half of which are
affiliated with Colás's organization.
Most of the directors of the libraries are
dissidents. Fourteen were arrested during
the regime's crackdown in March 2003, including
world-famous poet Raúl Rivero. Yet
as Robert Kent, co-chairman of the Friends
of Cuban Libraries, tells me, the independent
libraries take great pride in stocking books
reflective of all views. They tend to carry
Solzhenitsyn and Adam Smith, sure, but they
also have Granma, the Communist-party daily,
and works by pro-regime writers. Colás
believes that those Cubans who run the libraries
today will lead the post-Castro transition
tomorrow. He says the pro-democracy librarians
draw their inspiration from Gandhi, Martin
Luther King, and Vaclav Havel (there are
libraries named after each man). While the
U.S. Interests Section in Havana has provided
materials to the librarians since 1998,
these efforts have been stepped up under
James Cason's watch. As chief of Washington's
diplomatic mission, Cason has distributed
thousands of short-wave radios and books
to Cubans inside and outside the dissident
movement.
Among his many professional endeavors,
Colás now works at the University
of Miami's
Cuba Transition Project, whose advisory
board includes former U.N. ambassador Jeane
Kirkpatrick and former GOP senator Connie
Mack. Researchers there are studying the
lessons of democratic transition in Chile,
Eastern Europe, and Nicaragua. "We
believe that in Cuba, the transition has
already begun," Colás explains.
He stresses that the independent libraries
have a crucial role to play owing to the
tremendous bibliographic losses in Cuba
since the 1959 revolution. Much that was
written before the overthrow of Fulgencio
Batista has been abolished, destroyed, or
burned. "It would seem that [Cuba]
was discovered 45 years ago," Colás
jokes. "It's a society trapped in the
present, with no respect for the past. Fidel
Castro presents himself as the history of
Cuba." If not for those Cubans living
abroad, he adds, much of the nation's cultural
history would have been lost forever. The
independent libraries are thus invaluable
tools of change. They are vehicles through
which to inform the island's people of their
own history, to inculcate an appreciation
for the value of history, and to teach Cubans
how to live in a democracy. In short, the
libraries help establish civil society.
Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban
American National Foundation (CANF),
points out that the most advanced post-Communist
nations - Poland and the Czech Republic
- are places where the victims of Communism
were able to build a nascent degree of civic
culture before their liberation. When moving
from totalitarianism to democratic rule,
he emphasizes, the presence of a civil society,
however embryonic, is vital: "What
happens in a country where you have no civil
society is often the Russian model"
of corruption and authoritarianism. As Colás
puts it, "The libraries will have an
enormous role in ensuring that the errors
of the past aren't repeated."
Of course, we should be careful not to
overstate their influence. Dallas Morning
News writer Tracey Eaton, the paper's Cuba
correspondent, doubts that many Cubans feel
comfortable interacting with the librarians.
"Most ordinary Cubans want to stay
as far away as possible from dissidents
and pro-democracy activists," he writes
in an e-mail from Havana. "Associating
with them can mean missing out on that promotion,
losing your job or not getting a spot at
the university." For that matter, the
widespread arrests last March, along with
the executions of three Cubans who attempted
to hijack a boat to Florida, had a sobering
effect on the island's people.
There is, moreover, a broader pessimism
in certain quarters about the realistic
prospects for a democratic transition following
Castro's death. In his recently published
book, Cuba:
The Morning After, American Enterprise
Institute scholar Mark Falcoff argues that
the devastation wrought by Communism these
past 45 years will make a smooth transition
to liberal democracy nearly impossible.
Colás, while he shares this anxiety,
is somewhat more optimistic. He trusts that
many Cubans empathize with the independent
libraries movement - and the dissident movement
in general - but have yet to overcome "the
culture of fear." The oppositionists'
plight reinforces this fear. None of them,
Colás observes, have real employment;
once it's learned that they're pro-democracy,
pro-human rights, and anti-regime, they
(and often relatives as well) are immediately
stripped of their jobs. The only way they
can do their inestimable work is with outside
help.
"They have crumbs right now,"
Garcia says. "What we need to do is
get them the materials, the way we did,
for example, the Poles and the Czechs."
Vaclav Havel, Arpad Göncz, and Lech
Walesa - former presidents of the Czech
Republic, Hungary, and Poland, respectively
- offered this same Cold War analogy in
a September 2003 letter
to London's Daily Telegraph and other leading
Western newspapers. "Today, it is the
responsibility of the democratic world,"
they wrote, "to support representatives
of the Cuban opposition, irrespective of
how long the Cuban Stalinists manage to
cling to power. The Cuban opposition must
enjoy the same international support as
political dissidents did in divided Europe."
Some have questioned the wisdom of such
a Reaganite approach to Cuba. For one thing,
as Eaton notes, "The dissident movement
is deeply infiltrated. The Cuban government
has it totally wired." Naturally, this
could undermine the efficacy of aiding the
oppositionists. But then, anti-Communist
dissident movements have always been infiltrated
by secret policemen: that in itself is not
a reason to deny them assistance. Another
argument is that America's overt support
for pro-democracy Cubans gives the regime
an excuse to label them as salaried U.S.
"agents." Some claim that James
Cason's aggressive backing of the dissidents
indirectly brought on Havana's massive roundup
last year. Garcia has a ready, and simple,
answer to this critique: "When you
act upon what [Castro] might say, you let
him control what you will do. There's no
way to get ahead of the curve." U.S.
appropriations for the Cuban dissidents
do not contain money for salaries. (Although
foreign-aid packages often allot small amounts
of relief money for the victims of human-rights
violations.) But the larger point, Garcia
implies, is that American officials should
not make Cuba policy contingent on a dictator's
propaganda or threats. Besides, it is quixotic
to think that deliberate U.S. inattention
would somehow improve the dissidents' lot
or mitigate Castro's treatment of them.
Better that America should sustain those
who peacefully resist the jackboot of tyranny.
Expectations of a "Velvet Revolution"
in Cuba may be overly sanguine, but that
doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage a democratic
transition however possible. Colás
firmly believes that George W. Bush "has
the will" to affect how the island
changes. One way for Bush to demonstrate
that will, and America's, would be to increase
aid - not in the form of "salaries,"
per se, but moral, material, and rhetorical
aid - for all Cuban dissidents, including
the independent librarians. A vigilant pro-dissident
agenda in Washington would also circumvent
the U.S.-European stalemate over the American
embargo, and provide common ground for a
unified, coherent multilateral policy. (For
that matter, European countries - notably
Sweden and Spain - have generally been at
the forefront in assisting Cuba's private
librarians.) As Havel, Göncz, and Walesa
stressed in their letter, "It is time
to put aside transatlantic disputes about
the embargo of Cuba and to concentrate on
direct support for Cuban dissidents, prisoners
of conscience and their families."
It can't happen soon enough.
- Duncan Currie is a student at Harvard
University. He was an NR intern during the
summer of 2003.
March, 2004
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