Cuban Committee for Human Rights founded 40 years ago today in Cuba

 Honor, honor. - Jose Marti

Logo of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights

The struggle for a free Cuba has been a long affair with different episodes and different approaches.
Between 1959 and 1966 there had been a violent resistance to the Castro regime that carried out armed landings (1961); guerilla uprisings (1961 - 1966) that according to Carlos Alberto Montaner "lasted until approximately 1966, when the last foci of peasant guerrillas on the central mountains were exterminated." Many of the participants in the Anti-Castro armed struggle had first been members of Castro's July 26th Movement, who had fought in good faith to rid Cuba of the Batista regime with the aim of a democratic restoration. These Cubans returned to fight in the hills when it became obvious that the Castro brothers were imposing another and more brutal dictatorship.




On January 28, 1976 a candle was lit in Cuba and a new type of struggle for freedom initiated when Ricardo Bofill together with Marta Frayde at her home in Havana founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Carlos Alberto Montaner described how this movement came into existence during a speech in 2009 in Madrid, Spain:

Finally, in 1976, half a dozen Cuban opposition actvists with leftist backgrounds were summoned by professor Ricardo Bofill [3] and founded in Havana the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, the first political organization in the nation's history to expressly renounce violence as a method of struggle. The group decided to abide by the rule of law to reclaim the rights quashed by the dictatorship. Meanwhile, in exile in Washington, about the same time, Mrs. Elena Mederos, former minister in the revolutionary government, and activist and political scientist Frank Calzón, founded Of Human Rights with the same objective: to defend, by nonviolent and legal means, persecuted individuals, dissidents and political prisoners in Cuba.

In 1982 at the Combinado de Este prison Gustavo Arcos Bergnes and his younger brother, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes, joined the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. The brothers had been imprisoned in 1981 for trying to leave the country illegally. Soon thereafter, the Committee began to send out proclamations denouncing the deplorable conditions in which political prisoners were kept. 

Shortly after his release from prison in 1988, Gustavo Arcos succeeded the committee’s executive director, Dr. Ricardo Bofill, who was forced into exile.

In 1990, against the protests of many Cuban exiles, Gustavo Arcos issued a statement to Castro asking him to convene a "National Dialogue," which would include all segments of Cuban society, on the island and in exile. During his address to the Worker's Congress on January 28, 1990, Castro issued his response noting that "the Cuban people" will take care of those activists.

On March 5, 1990 government sponsored mobs attacked Sebastian Arcos's home. On March 8 another mob, led by future Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, attacked Gustavo's home. From exile, many old friends asked Gustavo to dissolve the Committee to save the activists' lives. Gustavo replied: "The Cuban Committee for Human Rights will continue its work, even if it costs us our own lives...no terror, nor propaganda will be able to deter the development of humanistic ideas in our country."

On January 13, 1992 the executive board of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights again issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to nonviolence and calling for dialogue:   "Violence is not and cannot be the solution to our problems... We will not tire from insisting that the only possible solution is civilized discussion of our differences. This is an appeal to Cubans for wisdom and common sense... No act of violence is justified... Let us say no to violence and learn to live in peace."

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes and Jesús Yanes Pelletier were arrested at their homes in Havana on the evening of 15 January 1992. Both Gustavo and Yanes Pelletier were released after approximately 24 hours. However, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes was charged with "enemy propaganda" and "inciting rebellion," he was sentenced to four years and eight months in jail. He was transferred to Ariza Prison in  Cienfuegos Province,  more than 130 miles from Havana, where Sebastian was imprisoned alongside dangerous criminals and was systematically denied medical attention. In 1993 the regime offered him a deal: Sebastian would be released immediately if he only agreed to leave the island for good. Sebastian rejected the deal, becoming the first documented case of a political prisoner choosing prison in Cuba over freedom in exile.

After an international campaign that included his designation as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and a request by France Libertés, the organization founded by former French first lady Danielle Mitterrand, Sebastian Arcos was released in 1995. A few weeks after his release, Arcos was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in the rectum, for which he had previously been denied medical care in prison. After a Cuban doctor was fired from his post for treating Arcos, he traveled to Miami for further care.

In 1996, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes testified before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. Sebastian Arcos Bergnes died in Miami surrounded by relatives on December 22, 1997.

Due to his worsening health in his last years Gustavo Arcos lowered his profile and ceded much of the work to exiled members of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Nevertheless, he met with US Senators visiting Cuba in 2000, with former President Carter in 2002 and signed a letter in 2003 denouncing the unjust imprisonment of 75 Cuban dissidents imprisoned in the Black Cuban Spring.

In the 2005, Associated Press article, Anita Snow reported that he stayed in touch with other dissidents and spoke "frequently with Oswaldo Paya, a devout fellow Roman Catholic who led a signature-gathering effort called the Varela Project, which sought a referendum asking voters if they favored civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to business ownership." The article concluded with Gustavo's concern that he would not live to see the return of democracy saying : "I do hope I will see the end of this, but I'm not sure if I will.
 
Gustavo Arcos passed away in Cuba on August 6, 2006. Martha Frayde passed away in Spain on December 4, 2013. Ricardo Bofill remains in exile in Miami, Florida and an active member of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights.

This nonviolent approach would endure and grow into a nationwide movement across Cuba and write new chapters in Cuba's history of resistance to tyranny. Today we remember the activists who forty years ago initiated this new, and nonviolent struggle for a free Cuba with the Cuban Committee for Human Rights.

Origins and Growth of the Democratic Opposition in Cuba

"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Regis Iglesias, Julio Ruiz Pitaluga and Oswaldo Payá in 2002

 The democratic opposition in Cuba predates the Castro dictatorship. It came into being on March 10, 1952 in reaction to General Fulgencio Batista's coup d'état against Cuba's democracy. The movement was divided between those who sought regime change through the remaining institutions of the republic and attempted to engage Batista in a civic dialogue and those who took up arms in an armed struggle. Batista's intransigence to leave power through the dialogue process made armed resistance more attractive. However, the military was corrupt and lacked fighting spirit and this meant that armed resistance could succeed. Fidel Castro's rise to national prominence was predicated on restoring the pre-existing democratic order using violent means and received support from Cuba's last democratically elected president, Carlos Prio Socarras.

The consolidation of power, with the assistance of the Soviet Union and the East German intelligence service into a totalitarian communist dictatorship was a rude shock to many compatriots of Fidel Castro who had fought alongside him to remove Batista from power. For example, President Carlos Prio Socarras who had backed Castro against Batista and returned to Cuba in 1959 in a short period of time understood that a democratic transition was not taking place went back into exile and in opposition to Fidel Castro. Many others who had fought in guerilla actions against Batista went back into the hills of the Escambray in an anti-Castro guerilla struggle that continued throughout the 1960s.

The Castro regime with Soviet and East German advisors overhauled the military and installed a disciplined fighting force. By 1962 there were more than 40,000 Soviet troops in Cuba. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis Fidel Castro also employed former Nazi Waffen SS to train Cuban units and the Cuban dictator purchased weapons from the extreme right in Germany.

The democratic armed resistance to the Castro dictatorship, mainly based in the Escambray mountain range in central Cuba was eventually crushed, but it took six years and the forced transfer of thousands to accomplish it.

A brief profile of one of these democrats, Julio Ruiz Pitaluga, who resisted the imposition of communism in Cuba, was made by Angel de Fana, of Plantados hasta Libertad y la Democracia en Cuba, who outlined the life of struggle that Julio Ruiz carried out. This is an approximation of the text:

Julio Ruiz Pitaluga or "Pita" to his friends had risen to the rank of captain in the July 26 Movement in the struggle against the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Like other rebels against Batista rule, after years of struggle he had to go into exile, but returned in 1959 with the end of the dictatorship. Only to find that his July 26 compatriot Fidel Castro was now forging a new and more brutal dictatorship. Pita joined together with Bernardo Corrales and other comrades in the struggle against the Batista dictatorship to now oppose the emerging Castro dictatorship.

Pita was imprisoned and sentenced to 30 years in prison for his opposition to the Castro regime. He  spent 23 years of his life in prison in Cuba as a political prisoner then refused to leave the island when released. Until his dying day he kept resisting and denouncing the dictatorship of the Castro brothers. Pita lived on 11th street between D and E avenues in the neighborhood of Lawton in Havana, Cuba. He died in Cuba in 2011. I'll return to him later.

Opposition Emerges from Within the Dictatorship 

Between 1959 and 2006 Fidel Castro had all power concentrated in his hands and due to a serious illness turned it over provisionally to his brother, General Raul Castro, who had previously been Minister of Defense. On February 24, 2008 the 597 members of the rubber stamp assembly unanimously elected a 31 member Council of State that in turn elected Raul Castro “president” at the Palace of Conventions in Havana, Cuba.

Within the dictatorship itself arose dissidents such as Martha Frayde, who was Cuba's representative to UNESCO in Paris until 1965 when she returned to Cuba and began to dissent from the Castro regime's slide into totalitarianism.


Together with Ricardo Bofill she was one of the founders of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976. Bofill in an August 2008 interview described how he, Martha and Eddy Lopez in Martha Frayde's home signed the founding document establishing the Cuban Committee for Human Rights.

She was jailed in 1976 and sentenced to 29 years in prison for her criticism of the Castro dictatorship but released into exile in 1979 following a campaign of international solidarity. In 1989 she founded the Spanish section of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and remained an active member until the end of her life in December of 2013. This organization successfully documented and exposed the systematic violation of human rights at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva leading to the Cuban dictatorship's condemnation.

 The political and economic reality of the Castro regime in 2014 is that it is a totalitarian military dictatorship that maintains political and economic control of Cuba. The regime elites are wealthy and want to maintain their status and look to China, Russia and Vietnam as models. At the same time the deterioration of the infrastructure, endemic corruption, cronyism, and rising expectations of change with the expected death of Fidel Castro threaten its survival.

New internal opposition movements emerge from outside of the dictatorship

Imagine for a moment growing up in a totalitarian dictatorship. What would drive you to stay and resist what has been in complete control for decades?

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas described how the Christian Liberation Movement, an opposition movement, came into existence and explained that it was related to the birth of their first child, Oswaldo José that he and his wife Ofelia decided:  

“When our first child was going to be born, we have three children, we said that our children cannot live in a country without liberty and we are not going to another country to seek freedom. Therefore we have to fight for our children to live free here in Cuba and everyone else’s children and their parents too.”    

Oswaldo José was born on February 17, 1988 and the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) came into existence that same year on September 8, 1988 on the Feast Day for Cachita, Our Lady of Charity. The founding of the Christian Liberation Movement began a new phase of nonviolent civic struggle for national reconciliation. In March of 1990 Oswaldo is detained for several days and interrogated by the political police of the regime and threatened that if he continues his nonviolent civic struggle that he would face several years in prison.  Following his release from detention Oswaldo Payá and the MCL make public a "Call to a National Dialogue" among all Cubans inside and outside the island. The movement begins a campaign to collect 10,000 signatures, with the intention of giving this citizen’s initiative the status of a Bill covered in Article 86 of the Cuban Constitution in force, before it was partially reformed in 1992.


On March 15, 1990, Jorge Luis García Pérez , a 25 year old Cuban of African descent born on October 10, 1964 with dreams of some day becoming a lawyer, stood up in an open plaza in Placetas, a town located in the middle of Cuba, and declared communism an error and dystopia. He was beaten and arrested for oral enemy propaganda and began a journey of imprisonment that would last 17 years and 38 days. Emerging from this nightmare he declared: "I will neither shut-up or leave." Within the prisons he had organized a movement named after Pedro Luis Boitel, a Cuban political prisoner who had died on hunger strike in 1972. After his release from prison he helped to organize and lead the National Civic Resistance and Civil Disobedience Front - Orlando Zapata Tamayo and is organizing protests across the island to destabilize the regime while reducing its repressive capacity. On the twentieth anniversary of his imprisonment Jorge Luis issued a statement that began:

"This March 15, 2010 marked the 20th anniversary of my imprisonment by the dynastic government you lead. I was 25 years, five months and 15 days old on March 15, 1990 when I declared myself to be an opposition activist and demanded democratic reforms; it took another 17 years for me to be released. I will never forget how during that time the sinister units of the political police physically and mentally tortured me, and tried in vain to break my dignity in exchange for releasing me or making my prison term more comfortable."

 
The Varela Project

From 1996 to 1997, Oswaldo drafted the Varela Project, a campaign to reform the Cuban legal system. During the Pope’s visit to Cuba in 1998, he was closely watched and guarded by state security — but that same year he and the Christian Liberation Movement still publicly launched the Varela Project and started collecting signatures for a referendum.

In 1999, he drafted the ”All United” manifesto and proposed the first meeting of the opposition, held under strong repression, which resulted in a movement of unity. Oswaldo was appointed coordinator of the “Rapporteur Committee for All United,” and in March, 2001, All United re-launched the call to collect 10,000 signatures for the referendum on the Varela Project.

On May 10, 2002, representatives of All United, led by Oswaldo, turned 11,020 signatures of electors into the National Assembly of Popular Power, in that way turning Project Varela into a bill under the prevailing Cuban Constitution. This obliged the Assembly of Popular Power to publicly discuss the Varela Project and to vote in favor or against it. Furthermore, the government was obliged to promote a public discussion of Project Varela in the mass media that it controlled (and still does). Among the activists who signed the Varela Project and joined Oswaldo in turning in the petition signatures was the old democratic resistance fighter, Julio Ruiz Pitaluga, who said: "I've waited 42 years to see this."

Instead of following its own own laws and regulations the Cuban government’s response was to organize its own petition drive to make the “socialist” aspect of the current Constitution untouchable. This supposed law was presented and approved by the Assembly in violation of its own regulations, since the Varela Project by precedence should have been considered first. Then on July 5, 2002, the Assembly “indefinitely” suspended its ordinary session to avoid discussing the Varela Project. The regime also responded with acts of repression and intransigence against members of the civic, nonviolent movement — but project Varela organizers continued to collect signatures and the civic movement grew.

Black Spring Crackdown

The Castro regime responded to the growth and dynamism of the civic movement on March 18, 2003, with the beginning of the Black Cuban Spring. Over a 100 activists were detained and seventy-five were sentenced to prison in show trials with sentences ranging from twelve years up to twenty-eight years in prison. More than forty of the imprisoned activists had worked on the Varela Project.

The Cuban government announced, at the time, that the dissident movement had been destroyed. However, the remaining activists who were still free continued to gather signatures, and Oswaldo turned in another 14,384 petition signatures on October 5, 2003. Furthermore, the wives, sisters, and daughters of the activists who had been detained and imprisoned organized themselves into the Ladies in White. A movement that sought the freedom of their loved ones and organized regular marches through the streets of Cuba, despite regime organized violence upon them.

Deaths of Opposition Leaders under suspicious circumstances


The Ladies in White, led by Laura Pollan, became a nationwide movement that with regular street demonstrations pressured the dictatorship to release their loved ones and challenge its wholesale violation of human rights standards. The movement achieved its aim of obtaining the release of the 75 Cuban prisoners of conscience imprisoned in March of 2003 between 2010 and 2011, but when Laura Pollan stated that the movement would continue in order to obtain the release of all political prisoners and changes in the law so that there are no more prisoners of conscience in Cuba within weeks she became suddenly ill and died under suspicious circumstances on October 14, 2011, but the group she founded did not falter or disappear. Berta Soler became the spokesperson of the Ladies in White and this movement has continued.

Ten months later on July 22, 2012 in Bayamo, Cuba Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante both of the Christian Liberation Movement were killed in an incident that has still not been cleared up and the new information that has emerged points to an extrajudicial execution by the State Security apparatus.

 
The State of Civil Society and the outlawed Democratic Opposition today

The nonviolent civic movement on the island has increased in numbers and activism despite the increase in arbitrary detentions, acts of violence and deaths perpetrated by agents of the government. Regional movements such as the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) and Central Opposition Coalition (CCO) and national movements such as the Ladies in White and the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Front for Civic Resistance and Civil Disobedience are respectively coordinating and impacting Cuba with regional and national street protests.


Currently the democratic opposition has three different initiatives underway gathering signatures throughout Cuba.

The People’s Path [ http://www.oswaldopaya.org/es/el-camino-del-pueblo/ ] , a project presented on July 13, 2011 by the martyred Oswaldo Payá calls for: “1. Changes in the laws that guarantee freedom of speech, press, association and religion, the right of Cubans to settle in any part of our country where they prefer to live, the right of Cubans to freely leave and enter Cuba freely, the right of all Cubans to have business and private enterprise in our country, all workers' rights, the right of Cubans to elect and be elected to public office by a new electoral law, the end to all discrimination against Cubans in their own country and the release of all those jailed for political reasons. 2. Achieving spaces that open participation with these changes in law and practice in respect of the rights of citizens, to convene a national dialogue and free elections for all offices and for a Constituent Assembly. 3. All Cubans without exclusions, without hatred, or vengeance, to make this transition in the way of truth and with transparency, reconciliation, liberty, solidarity, fraternity and peace, building a more humane and more just society in our sovereign and independent Homeland.”

The Citizen Demand for Another Cuba [ http://www.estadodesats.com/2012/06/for-another-cuba.html ] was made public on June 15, 2012 it calls on the Cuban government to: “immediately implement the necessary legal safeguards and policies devised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that it ratify the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights of the United Nations, signed by the Cuban Government on February 28, 2008 in New York City.”

On January 9, 2013, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, of the Lawton Foundation, unveiled Project Emilia [http://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2013/01/oscar-elias-biscet-presents-manifesto.html ] which in addition to affirming the demands of the previous two petitions also provides a mechanism for achieving change that goes beyond petitions and dialogues recognizing that “Cuba's communist regime has not conceded even one atom of freedom and has rigidly and arbitrarily resisted any changes that would ensure a decent life for our people. Consequently, we have no alternative but to launch the non-violent political challenge to realize the freedom of our people.” These three initiatives complement each other and demonstrate the common strategic nonviolent framework in which Cuba’s democratic opposition is working while having tactical differences about working within and outside the regime’s institutions.

 

Conclusion 

Opposition to and frustration with the current system in Cuba is rising. A manifestation of this is the worsening human rights situation; the deaths of opposition leaders; the increased violence; and the explosion in the numbers of arbitrary detentions. This is a battle of wills between a dictatorship that wants to hang on to its privileges and justify the past 55 years of totalitarian rule and a democratic opposition that represents a population that is tired and frustrated with the systematic rights violations and the lack of options in Cuba. International solidarity with human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists will be a critical factor in determining whether the regime will achieve and maintain its succession or whether the democratic opposition will achieve a transition to democracy. The photo at the top of the page taken in 2002 with Regis Iglesias, Julio Ruiz Pitaluga and Oswaldo Payá represents three generations of constant struggle for a free Cuba. Twelve years later and another generation of Cubans have joined the freedom movement. There is cause for hope if not optimism.

Reflection on the passing of Juan Clark and Antonio Augusto Villarreal

Hope versus despair in a totalitarian context

Juan Clark, PhD. and Antonio Augusto Villarreal Acosta

 The past year has been a tough one for friends of a free Cuba. There have been great losses: the academic, Juan Clark, the comedian, Guillermo Alvarez Guedes, the former chairman of Bacardi, Manuel Jorge Cutillas, the Christian Democrat and intellectual, José Ignacio Rasco, the human rights defender Martha Frayde, and now the former prisoner of conscience Antonio Augusto Villarreal Acosta. The majority of these Cubans died of natural causes, but two stand out: Juan Clark and Antonio Augusto Villarreal Acosta. Both apparently committed suicide.  Cuba  shares a dubious distinction with Uruguay as having the highest suicide rates in the Western Hemisphere. 

The Czech dissident Vaclav Havel in his 1986 book "Disturbing the Peace" offers an existentialist analysis of suicide that is in conflict with Catholic teaching:

I have never been able to condemn suicides; instead, I tend to respect them, not only for the undoubted courage needed to commit suicide, but also because suicides place the value of life very high: they think that life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without meaning, without love, without hope. Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.

The Church teaches that suicide is a grave sin that violates the fifth of the ten commandments: "You shall not kill."  However it does qualify that "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide." Finally it states that:

"We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives."

Psychologists have reported that there is an inner voice that drives a person to suicide and offer therapies on how to combat it. One cannot dismiss this as simply the result of a mental disorder, but rather a combination of factors. Hopelessness in combination with depression or other disorders can lead to suicide. Other studies have demonstrated a specific relationship between suicide and hopelessness otherwise known as despair.

Within the Cuban context, a society where totalitarianism has permeated every corner of existence (including familial relationships), despair is one of the few resources in great "abundance" in Cuba.  This leads to the obvious question: How does one confront despair?

Christians can appeal to God and faith, but what about agnostics and atheists? Vaclav Havel in a later essay "Never Hope Against Hope" offered a powerful definition and reflection on hope:

The kind of hope I often think about (especially in hopeless situations like prison or the sewer) is, I believe, a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't. Hope is not a prognostication — it's an orientation of the spirit. Each of us must find real, fundamental hope within himself. You can't delegate that to anyone else.
Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy when things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It's not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

 Havel here reaches far back into antiquity and offers a meditation on hope that the Stoics would have embraced. Hope as defined here by Havel is internal not external and offers those confronted with hopelessness with the tools to battle that inner voice of despair with the power of living with conviction in truth. In the case of Cuba where the secret police is out to destroy you in body and spirit such tools are a necessary part of physical and spiritual survival.

In the meantime my prayers go out to these dear departed and especially to Juan Clark and Antonio Augusto Villarreal Acosta.

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen."

Martha Frayde Barraqué: Founder Cuban Committee for Human Rights

 I remember but I don't hate. - Dr. Martha Frayde Barraqué

“I wanted to do something big for my country,” ... “Castro fooled us all, starting with me. The visionaries (who foresaw Castro’s dictatorship) from the start were a minority.” - Dr. Martha Frayde Barraqué, El Nuevo Herald interview (2008)

Wifredo Lam and Martha Frayde with others in Mexico in 1957. From the Martha Frayde Barraqué Papers.

Martha Frayde was a doctor, diplomat, dissident, human rights defender, exile and through it all, she remained a Cuban who never forgot her homeland.



She fought nonviolently against dictatorship in Cuba. First against Fulgencio Batista and later against Fidel Castro. Together with Ricardo Bofill she was one of the founders of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976. Bofill in an August 2008 interview described how he, Martha and Eddy Lopez in Martha Frayde's home signed the founding document establishing the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. In the 1984 documentary Improper Conduct she spoke about her experiences in prison.

Martha Frayde was Cuba's representative to UNESCO in Paris until 1965 when she returned to Cuba and began to dissent from the Castro regime's slide into totalitarianism.

She was jailed in 1976 and sentenced to 29 years in prison for her criticism of the Castro dictatorship but released into exile in 1979 following a campaign of international solidarity. Intellectuals and writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, Claude Roy, Phillippe Sollers, José Angel Valente, José María Castellet, Juan Goytisolo, Fernando Claudín, José Luis Aranguren, Joaquín Ruiz Jiménez, Rossana Rossanda, Octavio Paz, Norman Mailer, Barbara Probst Solomon, William Styron, Rose Styron penned an open letter to The New York Review of Books which in part stated:

The distinguished fifty-eight-year-old Cuban gynecologist, Doctor Martha Frayde, has been sentenced by the Cuban government, during this past year, to a twenty-nine-year prison sentence for espionage. This is tragic. Doctor Frayde has had a distinguished past—as a humanitarian, as a doctor, and as a revolutionary idealist. Her medical career speaks for itself. After graduating from the University of Havana Medical School in 1946, she was awarded a fellowship to McGill Medical School in Montreal. She then became assistant medical director in the Havana hospital, Calixto García. Doctor Frayde has been on the staff of the Saint Antoine hospital in Paris, the Saint Pierre hospital in Brussels, and in 1952 she was elected a member of the American Society of Endocrinology in Miami. In 1959, after the Cuban revolution, Doctor Frayde was appointed director of the National Hospital of Havana.

Doctor Frayde was an early supporter of Fidel Castro; they met during the Batista regime. Both Fidel Castro and Doctor Frayde were members of the same left-wing opposition group. Due to her militancy against the Batista regime, Doctor Frayde was arrested by the Batista police in 1957. She escaped prison by fleeing to Mexico where she lived in self-exile until the fall of the Batista regime. After the revolution Doctor Frayde became vice-president for Chinese-Cuban Solidarity and in 1959 she accompanied Fidel Castro on his visit to the United States and Canada. During this period, as president of the Cuban Peace Movement, she decorated Fidel Castro with the order of Lenin. From 1963 to 1964, Doctor Frayde taught gynecology in the Broca Hospital in Paris—during this period she was also a Cuban delegate to UNESCO. After her return to Cuba in 1964, Doctor Frayde voiced her alarm to Fidel Castro concerning his overly close ties to the Soviet Union. By 1965 Doctor Frayde was relieved of all her official posts and she went into private practice. In 1968 permission for Doctor Frayde to leave Cuba to teach at the University of Madrid Medical School was abruptly rescinded four days before her departure. Permission to leave the country was withheld from her “on grounds of national security.” In 1976 Doctor Frayde was placed under house arrest—later her personal possessions and her medical library were confiscated by the government and destroyed. Doctor Frayde was sent to a women’s prison for common criminals—Nuevo Amanecer.

She passed away yesterday at age 93 in Madrid, Spain. In 1989 she founded the Spanish section of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and remained an active member until the end of her life.