National dialogues in Cuba
Cuba's democratic nonviolent opposition has repeatedly engaged in dialogues, including national dialogues, in order to mobilize and coordinate Cubans to reflect on our homeland’s future.
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| Gustavo Arcos Bergnes and Sebastian Arcos Bergnes called for dialogue in 1990. |
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.
Oswaldo Payá throughout his life called for unity and dialogue between all Cubans, in and outside the country. His National Dialogue program and All Cubans Forum in 2005- 2006, involved over 15,000 thousand Cubans both inside and outside of Cuba in discussions on a proposal for a nonviolent change towards democracy. I proudly participated in this dialogue that sought a transition from the existing laws of the dictatorship to the rule of law in a restored democratic order. Payá near the end of his life called for a referendum on basic human rights. He was murdered, together with his movement's youth leader, on July 22, 2012.
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| Oswaldo Payá shows tentative program for a national dialogue in Havana on Feb 17, 2005. |
In November 2020, the San Isidro Movement, a movement of artists founded in 2018 to protest Decree 349 that increased censorship in the arts in Cuba, engaged in a series of escalating nonviolent protests, demanding the release of their colleague Denis Solís González unjustly jailed on November 9, 2020, and in response to increasing regime repression against them for protesting for his release. On November 26, 2020 the San Isidro Movement's headquarters was raided and artists protesting inside taken by the secret police.
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| Activists under siege at the Isidro Movement headquarters in Havana, Cuba |
The Castro regime ended up with a much larger problem than 14 protesters in a small space in the San Isidro neighborhood in Havana. Young people, mostly artists and academics, began gathering throughout the day of November 27, 2020 outside the Ministry of Culture.
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| Young Cubans gathered outside the Ministry of Culture on November 27, 2020 |
Their numbers continued growing into the evening demanding the Minister meet with protesters to negotiate terms for a dialogue. Thirty representatives, elected by the hundreds gathered, went in and met with officials.
They emerged with a commitment to dialogue and to consider the points raised by the protesters. Meanwhile the dictatorship sent truckloads of plainclothes security to surround the demonstrators, and to intimidate them. They also closed off the path to the Ministry of Culture, and began using tear gas and physical force to prevent others from continuing to join the protesters. Instead of following through with a dialogue to resolve the differences that had generated the protests the regime launched a media assault against the San Isidro Movement against the protesters.
Today, San Isidro Movement leaders Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez are prisoners of conscience serving five and nine year prison sentences in Cuba. Other members of the San Isidro Movement, such as Anamely Ramos González and Omara Ruiz Urquiola, were exiled by the Castro dictatorship and are not allowed to return home.
The Center for a Free Cuba in April 2021 hosted a conversation titled "The San Isidro Movement: Nonviolent Resistance, Power and Dialogue" with Professor Jorge Sanguinetty and Cuban artists Kizzy Macias and Eligio Perez Merino. It is available on YouTube in Spanish. It was moderated by Sebastian Arcos Cazabon.
Do not confuse the dictatorship with the Cuban people
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| On March 22, 2016, President Obama did the wave with dictator Raul Castro |
The United States Institute of Peace published a Peace Brief on October 23, 2015 by Susan Stigant; and Elizabeth Murray titled "National Dialogues: A Tool for Conflict Transformation?" that highlights both the opportunities and risks in adopting this tool.
"National dialogue is an increasingly popular tool for conflict resolution and political transformation. It can broaden debate regarding a country’s trajectory beyond the usual elite decision makers; however, it can also be misused and manipulated by leaders to consolidate their power."
The Cuban dictatorship's Miguel Díaz-Canel claims that they "want to strengthen [their] relationships with the United States, regardless of ideological differences,” but this is not the main problem. The main problem is the abusive relationship between the Cuban dictatorship, and the Cuban people.
The Castro regime has not indicated a desire to dialogue with the Cuban people, but to dialogue with the United States. This is not the first time that has happened, and it is not a game changer, but a tactic to prolong the dictatorship. It has been successfully carried out before.
Lessons for Cuba from the experience in Romania
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| President Richard Nixon and President Jimmy Carter met with Ceasescu |
The United States made this mistake before in Eastern Europe with their "successful" embrace of the Nicolae Ceasescu regime in Romania.
Out of all the countries of Eastern Europe, the United States had the closest diplomatic relations with Romania. This was due to the Nixon administration seeking to exploit differences between Romania and the Soviet Union. Nicolae Ceasescu denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and continued diplomatic relations with Israel maintaining an independent foreign policy from the Soviet Union.
Richard Nixon visited Romania
in August of 1969. In 1972 Romania became eligible for U.S.
Export-Import Bank credits and in 1975 was accorded most favored nation
status. In 1978 Nicolae Ceasescu and his wife visited Washington, DC on a
state visit and was hosted by President Jimmy Carter who welcomed the dictator and described him in the following glowing terms:
"I've enjoyed being with him. He's a very good adviser. He's a man who in the past has suffered greatly, imprisoned, tortured, but because of his courage and because of his belief in the future of his own country, notable achievements have been brought to the people who have confidence in him. It's a great pleasure for me again to express my welcome to him to our country, and I would like to propose a toast to a great leader, President Ceausescu, and to the brave and friendly people of Romania. Mr. President, to you and your people."
Despite having the worse human rights record in Eastern Europe it was not until 1988 that to preempt congressional action, Ceausescu renounced MFN treatment, calling Jackson-Vanik and other human rights requirements unacceptable interference in Romanian sovereignty. Secretary of State Schultz had warned Ceausescu in 1985 to improve his human rights behavior or lose favorable trade status. The Heritage Foundation argued in 1985 that the previous twenty years of U.S. engagement with the regime in Romania had coincided with deteriorating human rights standards.
Ceasescu's regime was one of the nastier dictatorships of the East block. In addition to the typical accoutrements of a Stalinist regime this "American ally" managed to reach new lows. Imagine for a moment being born and placed in a cage as a newborn washed via a hose with cold water and never experiencing human touch.
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| 10,000 Romanian babies infected with HIV through dirty needles. |
Fed like animals and contracting HIV, hepatitis, and other diseases through dirty needles used to inject the children with vitamins. This was done by Ceausescu's communist regime in Romania. The regime decided it needed to increase its population and in 2013 Scientific American explained how this crime was systematically planned out and its aftermath in the article Tragedy Leads to Study of Severe Child Neglect.
Nicolae Ceausescu decreed in 1966 that Romania would develop its “human capital” via a government-enforced mandate to increase the country's population. Ceauşescu, Romania's leader from 1965 to 1989, banned contraception and abortions and imposed a “celibacy tax” on families that had fewer than five children. State doctors—the menstrual police—conducted gynecologic examinations in the workplace of women of childbearing age to see whether they were producing sufficient offspring. The birth rate initially skyrocketed. Yet because families were too poor to keep their children, they abandoned many of them to large state-run institutions.Hundreds of thousands of children were subjected to this. This was the country that US taxpayers subsidized with US Export-Import Bank credits. Romania under Ceausescu inspired Margaret Atwood to write The Handmaid's Tale.
Romania, the country with the closest diplomatic and economic relationship with the United States in Eastern Europe, saw the rule of Nicolae Ceasescu end in a violent blood bath. The dictator and his wife executed in a show trial on Christmas day and scores of innocent Romanians shot by the state security services. More than a thousand people were killed. The communists in power under Ceasescu remained in power until 1996 in a system marked by continuity until democrats were able to wrest control from them nonviolently.
Relations between the United States and Communist Romania were "great", but the relation with the Romanian people was horrid, and that defined how things would end - not U.S. - Romanian relations. Furthermore, the good relations between the perverse regime in Romania and the United States, is a stain upon the honor of America.
Lessons from Poland
Thankfully, Ronald Reagan took a different approach in Poland, and the rest of Eastern Europe.
Ronald Reagan entered office on January 20, 1981 and on December 13, 1981 the communist regime in Poland had declared martial law and was cracking down on the Solidarity movement. 10,000 people were rounded up and about 100 died during martial law. Ronald Reagan in his Christmas Address on December 23, 1981 denounced the crackdown (beginning at 4 minutes into the above video) and outlined economic sanctions against Poland while demanding that the human rights of the Polish people be respected. He didn't call on Poles from the diaspora to represent American interests in normalizing relations with the Polish Communist regime while Polish dissidents were being rounded up and killed. The United States took a stand recognizing the sovereignty of the Polish people.
The Reagan Administration revoked most-favored-nation (MFN) status in response to the Polish Government's decision to ban Solidarity in 1981. The outcome in Poland was a nonviolent transition led by the Polish solidarity movement in a national dialogue between the government and the opposition that ended in free elections in 1989.
The approach being advocated in Cuba, by some policy makers, pursues the approach pursued in Romania, and will likely have a similar, bloody outcome to the shame of those who have advocated it.
We need a real national dialogue in Cuba, and that does not mean the United States siding with the dictatorship in Cuba, downplaying its crimes against the Cuban people as Washington did in Romania under three presidencies. It means recognizing the dictatorship for what it is, and not what you'd like it to be and side with the Cuban people, not their oppressor.
This is my first contribution to the current dialogue.
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