News » April 14, 2003

Dissent from Within

Anti-Castro petition gathers steam

By Patrick Michael Rucker

Havana—Maybe more than comedians, dictators rely on timing. Holding power is more than a series of purges, rallies and rigged elections. One has to know when to play the tyrant and when to play the savior. Fidel Castro, the world’s longest ruling dictator, proved he still has the knack last month when he timed a crackdown on internal dissent to coincide with the beginning of war in Iraq.

Hours before the first American cruise missiles hit Baghdad, Cuban security forces began rounding up independent journalists, democracy activists and other dissidents. In five days, 76 people had been arrested, according to the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation. None were immediately charged with a crime, though Cuban officials expressed their intention to try those it has labeled “counterrevolutionaries” and “traitors.”

To many observers, the latest shakedown shows that Castro had lost his patience—both with his increasingly outspoken domestic critics and with James Cason, chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, who has offered free Internet access, office space and encouragement to dissidents taking on Castro’s one-party Communist rule.

But while Castro had some of his strongest foes collared and threatened to have Cason expelled, Oswaldo Paya, his most celebrated internal critic, was notably ignored. That omission, more than the crackdown itself, might foreshadow the future of Cuba’s dissident movement.

Paya is the author of the Varela Project, a constitutionally permitted petition demanding greater human rights, amnesty for nonviolent political prisoners, free enterprise and electoral reform. Last May, Paya presented more than 11,000 signatures to Cuba’s National Assembly and demanded a public referendum on its principles.

Under the Cuban Constitution, the National Assembly should have responded to the petition last fall. Instead, the Castro regime has tried to ignore the Varela Project—named after a 19th century Cuban independence advocate—and discredit Paya, even as his international stature continues to grow. “You know what the secret is to this regime?” Paya rhetorically asks from his home in Havana. “Fear. But the Varela Project lets people say, ‘We are not afraid. Here you have my name and address, and I want change.’ For the first time, the people are mobilizing, and the government is growing fearful.”

The most recent recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Expression, the European Union’s top human rights prize, Paya is former Czech President Vaclav Havel’s choice for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Earlier this year Paya met Havel, the Pope, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other world leaders on a worldwide tour to promote the Varela Project. No Cuban dissident has ever garnered such renown. Yet from the start, he has been Castro’s most unlikely rival. The voice of Cuban political opposition has typically come from Miami’s hard-line, exile Cuban community, and in the opinion of that constituency, the Varela Project was doomed.

Conventional wisdom had it that Paya could never organize the grassroots network the Varela Project required. Yes, the Cuban Constitution ostensibly permitted such a petition, but it seemed like a ploy—a tempting lever of democracy deep within Castro’s totalitarian apparatus that no one would be foolish enough to grasp.

And the project itself was rather too conciliatory for Miami Cubans’ liking. They wanted to confront the Castro regime head-on, while the Varela Project sought reform. Even if Paya got his signatures, Miami Cubans were not likely to support it.

But if Miami Cubans were skeptical, Paya’s fellow dissidents were inspired. Unlike every dissident effort before it, the Varela Project challenges the Castro regime on its own terms. It does not come as a vendetta, but as a very patient question: When are we going to get our freedom?

Not surprisingly, Castro has tried to change the subject. Last spring, he organized a national referendum on Cuba’s communist system. After days of government-sponsored marches and rallies, 99 percent of Cuban voters endorsed the proposal making the island’s communist system “irrevocable.”

It was a cynical mockery of the Varela Project that at any other time would have left Castro well satisfied. But, as he knows better than anyone, 8 million extorted votes for communism do not amount to one freely given signature for democracy. Next to the Varela Project, Castro’s theatrics seem strained and unconvincing.

In another era, back when the Soviet Union was the only power that mattered to Castro, Paya would have been dealt with summarily. Even today, if Paya was a shrill extremist of the Miami variety, he could be easily discredited. But that era is gone, and the Varela Project is implicitly reasonable.

All of that leads us to the events in Cuba last month. Castro ordered a crackdown to prove he still could. But while half of those arrested were Varela Project activists, the group’s leader was spared. One can only conclude that, for Castro, arresting Paya would be more trouble than it is worth, bringing the kind of international condemnation his broken regime would just as soon avoid. In short, Oswaldo Paya has the world’s attention, and Fidel Castro is rattled.

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• Reader Comments

  Its amazing.  An article like this, juxtaposed with all of your leftist Iraq articles.  Let me quote from above, “You know what the secret is to this regime?  Fear.” Sounds an awful lot like the situation in Iraq.  Yet In These Times criticizes one regime and attacks the US for eliminating another.

  Posted by Scott on Apr 16, 2003 at 11:05 PM

  I don’t think anyone here is pro-Iraq or in anyway supportive of their former government.
  The whole point is what the US did, not what was going on over there.
  
  A lot of people, I’m not saying you, will automatically say if you’re not for the US actions, you’re against them, or you’re on the side of whoever the US will attack this week.
  The whole point, I think a lot of people here who are opposed to war make are the reasons, the lack of support from other nations, lack of support from respected leaders within our country and what we’ve done or haven’t done. Just a year ago the priority was finding bin Laden and he hasn’t been found.

  If we have a war, we’d like actual good to come from it for the people in Iraq instead of having the country sold out from under them to American contractors. And all the promises made to Afghanistan haven’t been kept, including the effort to find bin Laden.
  That’s frustrating for all of us who don’t want to see further soldiers killed or have a known enemy to the US still out there. And don’t want further terrorist agression against us.

  Yes, fear is being used, I’ll have to agree. It’s a powerful way to get your argument across. Weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons had a lot of people worried. But then, that reason disappeared because they knew they wouldn’t find them--still haven’t--so it became Iraqi freedom.
  We’ve been lied to so much by our govenrment, both parties, that it’s incredible that people will go along with what they hear on the news.
  Just two years ago, many Republicans said they didn’t believe the “liberal news media”. Now they do?

  Just something to think about.

  Cheers,
  

  Posted by neil on Apr 17, 2003 at 3:35 AM

  So from In These Times’ perspective, Colin Powell, The Financial Times and James Cason know what’s best for Cuban “democracy,” but 8 million Cubans, cowed sheep all, don’t?

  Smells like warmed over State Department socialism.

  Shame.

  Posted by Peter Anestos on Apr 17, 2003 at 1:38 PM

  I get enough anti-Castro dribble in the mainstream media.  I don’t need to read it here.  Leave the one country that has stood up to U.S. imperialism alone.  The monster we live in is where we need to focus.

  Posted by James Schaudt on Apr 18, 2003 at 7:30 PM

  “free enterprise and electoral reform”.

  That is the part of his goals that one could drive a truck through. When enterprise is freed for control by corporations it is taken away from individuals. When electoral reform means that money is the same as speech then elections can be bought. In spite of many concerns that I have about Castro, I have to give him credit for holding off those two big monsters.

  Posted by j! on Apr 18, 2003 at 8:25 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 18 posts.

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