CUBA: Carter Visit Gives Dissidents a Boost

By Dalia Acosta and Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta and Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 16 2002 (IPS) - Former United States President Jimmy Carter’s visit to Cuba this week brought an opening to the country’s fragmented domestic opposition movement, although some dissident leaders are sceptical with respect to the real scope of the newfound tolerance.

Carter spent much of Thursday, the second to last day of his stay in this socialist island nation, in meetings with around 20 prominent representatives of dissident groups, which are illegal but tolerated to some extent.

The dissidents met with Carter in the home of United Nations representive Luis Gómez Echeverri.

One of the opponents of the government to meet with the former U.S. president was Vladimiro Roca, who was released from prison on May 5, two months before the end of a five-year term for “sedition.”

Roca was the head of the so-called “Group of Four” dissidents who were arrested in 1997 after signing a document titled “The Fatherland is for All”, calling for political reforms and urging voters to boycott elections.

The other members of the Group of Four – Félix Bonne, Martha Beatriz Roque and René Gómez, who were released one by one before completing their sentences – also met with Carter, who served as president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.

In his first contact with dissidents after his arrival to Havana last Sunday, Carter met early Monday with the president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, Elizardo Sánchez, and the head of the Christian Liberation Movement, Oswaldo Payá.

Sánchez and Payá were also invited to a second meeting with Carter on Thursday.

Reporters outside the UN official’s home said Carter conversed with small groups of four or five dissidents, who would file out of the house as their meetings came to an end.

The former U.S. president told the dissidents that he would not discuss the issues that were addressed, apparently until the press conference he plans to give Friday, just before leaving Cuba.

But Roque, one of the first to leave the house, said he and Carter talked about the deprivation of civil rights in Cuba, such as the freedom to travel.

Roque cited the specific case of Dr. Hilda Molina, the former director of the International Centre for Neurological Restauration (CIREN), who has been waiting for seven years for permission to visit her son in Argentina.

On Tuesday, Carter expressed his strong support for Project Varela, an initiative by a coalition of 119 dissident groups that collected over 11,000 signatures to request a referendum on freedom of speech and assembly, new election laws, an amnesty for political prisoners, and greater freedom for private enterprise.

Article 88 of the Cuban constitution allows citizen to directly submit draft laws to parliament as long as they are accompanied by the signatures of at least 10,000 voters.

Payá, the main promoter of Project Varela, delivered the petition to the single-chamber parliament two days prior to Carter’s arrival.

“When Cubans exercise the right to peacefully change their laws through a direct vote, the world will see that it is Cubans and not foreigners who decide the future of this country,” said Carter.

The former president’s address, delivered in the main hall of the National University, was broadcast live to the entire country by the state-controlled radio and television stations late Tuesday.

The Cuban population thus learned about Project Varela, which was almost completely ignored by the local media, in contrast to the wide coverage it received abroad.

Diplomatic circles consider Project Varela the most serious bid for change by a unified coalition comprised of many of Cuba’s dissident organisations.

The domestic opposition movement is divided into what the government dismisses as “tiny groups in the pay of Washington.”

The initiative has been publicly applauded by the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Vicki Huddleston.

However, some dissident groups say Project Varela is not viable, arguing that the conditions do not exist for taking steps towards a transition and opening to democracy based on the constitution.

“We do not believe that the government is going to accept as legitimate an initiative arising from interlocutors that it does not recognise, who are non-legal entities in political terms,” Manuel Cuesta Murúa, with the Cuban Democratic Socialist Current, told IPS.

Cuesta Murúa, who also met with Carter Thursday, maintained that an initiative pushing for concrete reforms would first of all require the legal recognition of dissident organisations.

Marta Beatriz Roque reportedly presented to Carter the text of an alternative to Project Varela, which was backed by Roca, the former head of the now dismantled Group of Four.

The government of Fidel Castro has not publicly responded to Carter’s speech, which criticised the lack of civil rights and democracy in Cuba. Nor did the state-run press report on Carter’s references to Project Varela.

But government spokespersons have repeatedly described Project Varela as a product “imported” from the United States.

Similar meetings between prominent dissidents and foreign dignitaries like Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, then- president Julio María Sanguinetti of Uruguay, and Jorge Sampaio of Portugal took place in 1999, during the ninth Ibero-American Summit held in Havana.

At that time, the Cuban government maintained that the meetings were part of a U.S. attempt to “sabotage” the summit, which he blamed on then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and officials at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

Observers said the voices of Cuba’s dissidents had never been heard so loudly as on that occasion – not even during the January 1998 visit to Cuba by Pope John Paul II, when the eyes of the world were drawn to this Caribbean island nation of 11 million.

In the run-up to the Ibero-American Summit, dissident leaders gave a flood of interviews and press conferences, and released dozens of statements and communiques to foreign journalists.