POLITICS-CUBA: Dissidents Wary of Aid Proposed in US Senate Bill

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 19 2001 (IPS) - A bill in the US Congress on financial support for political opposition groups in Cuba, an initiative sponsored by senator Jesse Helms, would jeopardise – not help – those who are seeking peaceful change on the socialist-run island, say the dissidents themselves.

Helms, of the Republican Party, and 10 other senators presented the bill Wednesday – dubbed the Cuba Solidarity Act 2001 – which proposes designating 100 million dollars over four years for dissident groups in the Caribbean country.

The opposition groups could receive the aid in cash or in medications, food, fax machines, telephones or other supplies, says Helms, who also co-authored the 1996 law that reinforced Washington’s four-decade embargo against Cuba.

“Ideas like this do not help the peaceful opposition to gain ground within Cuba,” said Rafael León, of the Democratic Cuban Project, one of the five groups involved in the opposition Panel of Reflection.

León told IPS that the US senator’s proposal is “a gesture of interference, and that is how the government will interpret it,” and would give the Fidel Castro administration more ammunition to say that “the dissidence is bankrolled by foreign powers.”

The Cuba Solidarity Act has the backing of the powerful Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), a lobbying umbrella for Cuban exile groups in the United States that are vehement in their opposition to the Castro government.

Nevertheless, the bill triggered debate in the US Congress, where divergent opinions thrive as to what the nation’s policy toward Cuba should be.

Democratic Party senator Christopher Dodd stressed that “what is important here to find the best way to help the Cuban people,” and that is by ending the economic blockade against the island and revoking the ban on US citizens’ travel to Cuba.

Helms based his initiative on the notion of providing the Cuban dissidents with support similar to the aid the US government, under Ronald Reagan, sent to the groups opposed to Poland’s communist government in the 1980s.

Elizardo Sánchez, president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said it is flawed to compare the experience of Poland with the current reality of Cuba.

Sánchez, a former professor of Marxism who has been active in the opposition ranks for more than 30 years, commented that totalitarianism arrived in Poland with the armed tanks of the former Soviet Union, while the Cuban system is the result of the “extremely popular” revolution Castro himself led.

“The difference lies in the roots. There are elements (from the Poland experience) that are not found in Cuba, such as religious culture, a broad pro-democracy movement, or a weighty peasant farming sector,” he said.

For his part, Héctor Palacios, of the Centre for Social Studies, warned that the Helms bill would create “more tensions and justifications (for the government) not to change.”

Palacios and Sánchez are two of the main proponents of building consensus – through the Varela Project – among Cuba’s fragmented opposition, all groups that operate here illegally.

The Project’s promoters define it as a political platform that opens the way “for achieving legal guarantees” in the exercise of rights, such as freedoms of the press and of expression, property rights and others.

According to the reports that have reached the accredited foreign press in Cuba, 136 people have signed the opposition’s appeal for support to demand a national plebiscite on this initiative.

Through this consultation, “the people would decide – with sovereignty – on the changes that should be made to the laws, so that they guarantee the free and responsible participation of citizens in the economic, social and political life of our society,”

The Cuban Constitution establishes that an initiative of this type, promoted by citizens, requires gathering signatures – verified by a notary public – of 10,000 voters.

“So far we have not been bothered” in our efforts to collect signatures, said Palacios, who expressed concern that the Helms bill would give the Castro government an excuse “to attack us.”

Havana has long maintained that the United States is financing “tiny groups” on the island to foment subversion here, to the extreme of turning counter-revolutionary activity into “an easy way of life.”

The bill before the US Congress also calls for assistance for political prisoners and their families, as well as for economists, independent journalists and members of religious groups, and includes plans to provide resources for independent libraries and farming groups in Cuba.

In addition, press reports indicated that the legislation would attempt to modify the US trade ban so that Cubans who are self- employed could sell their goods to the United States.