Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

CUBA: Dissident Groups Slowly Get Back on Their Feet

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Dec 19 2003 (IPS) - Cuba’s fragmented internal opposition movement is attempting to recover from harsh blows received this year, while continuing to call for the release of the 75 activists sentenced to lengthy prison terms in April.

”We’re alive and kicking,” Vladimiro Roca told IPS. The activist is a spokesman for Todos Unidos (United All), a coalition that emerged in 1999, bringing together groups working for change and democratisation in this Caribbean island nation.

Roca, who spent five years in prison, up to May 2002, for his active opposition to the socialist government of Fidel Castro, is among the best-known dissidents not rounded up in the massive March arrests.

The 75 activists arrested in March were sentenced to up to 28 years in prison on charges of ”conspiring with a foreign power (the United States) to subvert the internal order”.

The arrests had an enormous impact, and paralysed the illegal opposition groups for several months. But ”we are now recovering,” said Roca, who added, however, that the risk of being arrested has not yet passed.

Elizardo Sánchez, a prominent human rights activist, said that in his case, the government resorted to an attempt at discrediting him and ruining his reputation, by publishing a book in which he is accused of collaborating with the Cuban intelligence services.

The arrests, coming on top of the summary trial and execution of three men who hijacked a passenger ferry in an attempt to defect to the United States, threw Cuba’s relations with the European Union (EU) into crisis.

The EU decision to invite dissidents to the embassy celebrations of European national holidays remains the biggest obstacle for a normalisation of relations between Cuba and the European bloc.

As proof that the opposition movement is still alive, Roca pointed to a recent proposal launched by Oswaldo Payá, the head of the Christian Liberation Movement, for a ”National Dialogue” in which Cubans would design their own blueprint for a transition to democracy.

Another sign that the movement is getting back on its feet, according to Roca, was the submission to parliament in October of new signatures in support of the Varela Project, which is seeking to hold a public referendum on changes to Cuba’s socialist system.

The proposal, which takes its name from Catholic priest, philosopher, politician and journalist Félix Varela, one of the foremost thinkers of Cuba’s 19th century independence movement, is based on an article in the constitution according to which citizens can suggest the creation of a new law if the signatures of at least 10,000 voters are collected.

More than 25,000 signatures have been presented to parliament so far, and Payá, the driving force behind the Varela Project, says he will continue gathering signatures, despite a constitutional amendment approved last year that declared Cuba’s socialist system ”irreversible.”

Payá’s proposal for a National Dialogue, announced this month, is based on a 70-page document that the activist defines as an instrument for engaging society in a debate that will eventually give rise to a plan for a transition to democracy, which would ultimately be approved by voters in a public referendum.

The National Dialogue would thus enable Cubans themselves to decide what their future should look like.

The aim of the document is a country with a new constitution, a market economy, and a government that is totally different than the one that has been in power for over four decades. However, free public education and health care would be maintained.

The initiative, which analysts have described as the most ambitious proposal presented by the internal opposition in years, apparently took other dissident groups by surprise.

”I haven’t received the text, and I don’t comment on things I am not familiar with,” said Roca.

Nor have the social democratic groups that joined together in the Moderate Opposition Reflection Panel or the Arco Progresista (Progressive Arc) received a copy of the National Dialogue document or a formal invitation to participate.

Arco Progresista spokesman Manuel Cuesta Morúa argued that proposing a new constitution was overly ambitious. In a conversation with IPS, he said it was best to start out with small steps that gradually create a climate of confidence.

In Cuesta Morúa’s opinion, both of Payá’s initiatives – the Varela Project and the National Dialogue – are lacking in political realism. ”I’m not saying we don’t need constitutional changes, just that this is not the time to demand them,” he underlined.

The Reflection Panel and Arco Progresista presented a ”Charter of Fundamental Rights and Duties of Cubans” this year, after consulting more than 30,000 citizens.

”We will continue to dedicate ourselves to our work aimed at creating the foundations of a human rights culture through citizen dialogue on the issue,” said Cuesta Morúa.

The activist added that participation by Cuban citizens helps ward off ”misinterpretations” of the activities of opposition groups. ”We try to carry out our work basically among Cubans, without leaving room for anything that could be seen as external meddling,” he said.

Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, a former political prisoner who returned this year from exile in the United States with the intention of staying in Cuba, said the dissident groups should first and foremost be clearly independent.

Events this year have amply demonstrated that it will not be possible to build anything if opposition groups continue to follow the same direction they took in the past, said Gutiérrez Menoyo, the head of Cambio Cubano (Cuban Change), an organisation he created in the United States in 1993 which is in favour of dialogue with the Cuban government.

Four months after deciding not to board the plane that took his family back to the United States without him, the Spanish-born Cuban political activist is still awaiting an official reaction to his decision to stay in Cuba.

Gutiérrez Menoyo, who went into exile due to disagreements with the direction taken by the Castro administration in the wake of the January 1959 revolution, returned in 1964 to fight the government, a decision that cost him 22 years in prison.