RIGHTS-CUBA: Dissident Allowed to Travel with Open-Ended Itinerary

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 30 2004 (IPS) - A leading Cuban dissident, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, was heading to Spain late Wednesday with an open-ended itinerary and guarantees from the government that he will be able to travel ”without limitations,” his daughter Patricia Gutiérrez told IPS.

Gutiérrez Menoyo, 69, who returned to Cuba from exile in the United States last year but has not yet received official authorisation to live here, was given permission by the socialist government of Fidel Castro to exit and enter the country on his Cuban passport.

The prominent activist, who founded and heads the U.S.-based moderate dissident group Cuban Change, was invited to take part in the 36th congress of Spain’s governing Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) Jul. 2-4, he explained in a statement issued Wednesday.

”He has an open agenda and open-ended itinerary to stay in Spain fulfilling whatever commitments might arise during the congress,” said Patricia Gutiérrez, president of the Editorial Plaza Mayor publishing house, based in Puerto Rico.

She also forms part of the political leadership of Cuban Change, which seeks dialogue with the Castro government.

In her view, the government’s permission for her father to travel amounts to ”implicit” recognition of his right ”to live in Cuba, as the head of Cuban Change,” she said in an e-mail interview from Puerto Rico.

The ”decision to allow him to travel abroad with his Cuban passport indicates that his legal status can be taken for granted,” said Gutiérrez.

She also pointed out that her father had been invited to the May 21-23 conference on ‘The Nation and Emigration’ in Havana, in which the government met with moderate Cuban exiles, ”where he was able to express himself.”

Gutiérrez Menoyo has been living in this Caribbean island nation in a sort of legal limbo since Aug. 7 when, after a vacation in Havana with his family, he announced in the airport that he had decided to stay here and continue his work as an activist.

From ”a legal and political standpoint, the government is sustaining my right to remain in my country, and indicating a willingness to legalise my status,” said the dissident in the written statement that he distributed to the foreign press.

He added that his trip will be ”useful for continuing the task of working towards a peaceful opening in Cuba,” although he did not clarify whether his trip would include a visit to the United States or any other country besides Spain.

”For those of us in the independent opposition, it is very encouraging news, and we agree with him that the Cuban government is reengaging in the dialogue that began when Castro agreed to meet with my father in 1995,” said Gutiérrez.

The dissident’s oldest daughter added that ”the Cuban government is able to distinguish between a peaceful, independent opponent and one who wants to destabilise the government while hiding under the trappings of pacifism and perhaps working in line with the agenda of a foreign” country.

The Spanish-born Gutiérrez Menoyo obtained Cuban citizenship for his participation in the guerrilla struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, which he helped overthrow in 1959 in the revolution headed by Castro.

Due to differences with the direction taken by Castro’s revolutionary government, he went into exile and returned in December 1964 to try to stage an armed uprising against the Cuban government.

That attempt cost him 22 years in prison. After his release in 1986, he went into exile again, where he founded Cuban Change in 1993, based on the argument that ”change without bloodshed is possible.”

He is also an outspoken critic of the hostile U.S. policy towards Cuba and of opposition groups manipulated from abroad.

In an earlier interview with IPS, Gutiérrez Menoyo said the United States ”has engaged in more than 40 years of confrontation without achieving anything. That stance is not contributing to the democratisation of Cuba.”

In his view, the successive U.S. governments have not only taken a mistaken approach, but have allowed an elite group of Cuban exiles in the United States to dictate the country’s policy towards Cuba.

Last May, he only had harsh words for the latest measures with which the administration of President George W. Bush aims to stiffen the four-decade embargo against Cuba and ”hasten the transition to democracy” in this socialist island nation.

The new measures, which went into effect Wednesday, limit visits by Cuban-Americans to once every three years rather than once a year, and restrict shipments of gifts that can be sent to relatives in Cuba.

In addition, Cubans living in the United States will only be able to visit immediate family members in Cuba.

According to Patricia Gutiérrez, the measures further ”hurt family unity” and ”create pain among Cubans.”

She said the Cuban government’s gesture of allowing her father to fly to Spain ”feels like a relief” against that backdrop of mounting hostility.

”We hope it takes us closer towards solutions that will put an end to all of these separations and the pain, and that it won’t only be my father who is allowed to enter and leave, to be reunited with his family, but an entire people united in new forms of democracy,” she said.

Other Cuban dissidents were also invited to the PSOE congress, including Vladimiro Roca with the Todos Unidos (Everyone United) coalition, who told IPS, however, that he had not applied for permission to travel because he received the invitation ”very late, not until last Thursday.”