Progressive Claims There Are Lessons for American Police in Cuba? Do Black Lives Matter in a Communist Police State?

Do Black Lives Matter in Cuba?

Silverio Portal Contreras, prisoner of conscience

The Progressive, a publication founded in 1909 in Madison, Wisconsin claims to question anything, but when it comes to Cuba it has swallowed hook, line, and sinker the misinformation of the Castro regime on policing. On June 18, 2020 they published an article titled "Foreign Correspondent: Police Lessons From Cuba" by Reese Erlich that claims "Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States."

On the same day Havana Times published an article by IPS-Cuba titled "Is it legal to Take Photos or Videos of Police in Cuba?" The case of George Floyd became known because his death was recorded by a civilian who witnessed the events as they transpired, and then uploaded the video and shared it with others. Now the question is would it be legal to do that in Cuba? 

According to Cuban lawyer Humberto Lopez asked last Wednesday June 10th, on an episode of his “Hacemos Cuba” TV show "recording the police officer isn't illegal or constitute a crime" but “if this image is uploaded onto a digital platform without this person’s consent, then you are using it without their authorization,”would violate the right to privacy of the police officer under Article 48 of the Cuban Constitution. The Cuban attorney added "that if the intent of the publication is to defame police actions (he didn’t say if it mattered if these actions were right or wrong), it is an administrative violation, which is subject to a fine, because it violates Decree-Law 370 passed in 2018, by the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications." 

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Therefore, if the United States adopted this Cuban approach any person recording a police officer, then sharing that image on a digital platform would be violating their right to privacy, and if what they record the police officer doing, whether his or her actions were right or wrong, they would be fined and if they did not pay the fine would be subject to prison.

A law, patterned after Cuba's, would require those who record police on or off the job to get the approval of the police officer recorded before sharing the video with any digital platforms. Thankfully, the First Amendment prohibits such restrictions in the United States, and also runs afoul of international human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory, even though the document is censored in the island.

According to a January 13, 2020 report in The New York Times a former high-ranking judge in Cuba provided documents which "showed that approximately 92 percent of those accused in the more than 32,000 cases that go to trial in Cuba every year are found guilty. Nearly 4,000 people every year are accused of being “antisocial” or “dangerous,” terms the Cuban government uses to jail people who pose a risk to the status quo, without having committed a crime." Furthermore, the article says that "records show that Cuba’s prison system holds more than 90,000 prisoners. The Cuban government has only publicly released the figure once, in 2012, when it claimed that 57,000 people were jailed."

Based on the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, according to the January 13, 2020 article by EuropaPress, Cuba today has the largest per capita prison population in the world.

The United States, in contrast to Cuba, offers regular reports on its prison system, and allows the International Committee of the Red Cross access to its prison, including high security areas such as the prison at the Guantanamo Naval Base. The reason that so much is known and documented about the abuses with regards to the prisoners there is because the International Committee of the Red Cross has visited the U.S. Guantanamo detention facility over 100 times since 2001.

Meanwhile over the past 20 years the Cuban government permitted no visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Cuba's prisons. The Castro regime considered allowing a visit in 2013, but decided against it.

The Castro regime has demonstrated by not allowing international observers into its prisons that it is out of sight out of mind from most international indices, and gets the benefit of the doubt from "progressive publications."

Nevertheless there are moments that highlight the brutality of the regime.

Three black men executed by firing squad for trying to leave Cuba.

Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac, were shot by firing squad following a speedy "trial" in 2003 for trying to leave Cuba. On April 2, 2003 eleven Cubans hijacked a ferry traveling to Regla from Havana with 40 people on board with the intention of traveling to the United States of America but ran out of fuel 28 miles off the Cuban coast and were towed back to the island.  Despite verbal threats made against the safety of the passengers to maintain control of the vessel, the situation, according to the authorities, ended without violence and that “all of those who had been on board were rescued and saved without so much as a shot or a scratch.”
The hijackers were tried by the "Court for Crimes against State Security of the People’s Court of Havana. The Court had applied the specially expedited summary proceeding contemplated in Articles 479 and 480 of the Criminal Procedure Act, and found guilty. They appealed their sentence, and it was quickly denied.  Unlike in the United States the Judiciary in Cuba is not independent of the Executive.

In the early morning of April 11, 2003, following the decision handed down by the Council of State, the sentences were carried out and Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García, and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac were executed by firing squad. Nine days after the hijacking and three days after the trial.

The Cuban government also knew how to handle the aftermath and avoid negative publicity.

Family members were informed of their loved ones' summary executions after they had already been buried.

​ Ramona Copello mourns execution of her son Lorenzo Enrique in 2003

Ramona Copello, Mother of Lorenzo Enrique Copello interviewed by the Associated Press described how: "They came to my home at 6 in the morning and knocked on the door and told me to go to the cemetery at 10:00. He was already dead and buried. Go to the cemetery at 10 (am) so we can tell you where your relative is buried. That was it. He was already buried, he was covered. I asked and implored and even kneeled so they would let me see his face. Since they are liars, I couldn't believe it was him. I uncovered the crypt. I uncovered it because I wanted to see if it was really him, but I couldn't see his face because the security and police arrived and so I didn't get to see his face. I'm not sure if it's my son or a dog buried there."

Lorenzo Enrique was 31 years old and left behind a widow and an 11 year old daughter, who last saw her dad on April 10, 2003. He worked as a caretaker in a health center.

Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla executed in 2003

On April 12, 2003 the Spanish newspaper El Pais on how another family reacted. "According to eyewitnesses, in the neighborhood of Central Havana, where Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla lived, who was 21 years old, some incidents were recorded when the execution was reported to his family. Sevilla's mother suffered a nervous breakdown upon hearing the news and went out of the house shouting against the government and crying, to which dozens of neighbors joined. The police arrived to control the situation and kept the area cordoned off all day long."

On April 25, 2003 Fidel Castro appeared on television to defend the three executions, and show trials against nonviolent dissidents that had taken place in parallel. The official transcript left out unscripted comments by the old dictator who referred to the three executed men as the "tres negritos" which translates into English as the "three pickaninnies."

Unlike in the United States, all mass media in Cuba is controlled by the Cuban Communist Party, and any embarrassing or inconvenient statements can be disappeared and erased from public view.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a black Cuban prisoner of conscience was subjected to systematic physical and psychological torture between 2003 and 2010, and following his death on February 23, 2010 was subjected to a campaign of vilification by Cuba's Communist authorities. Orlando's mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, denounced her son's mistreatment and held up a blood stained shirt that belonged to her son, who had been beaten up by prison guards, for rejecting communist re-education and continuing to denounce human rights violations in the prisons.
 

​ Reina Luisa Tamayo, with her son's bloody shirt

Ten years have passed since his untimely death, but many inside and outside of Cuba continue to demand justice for him and his family. The poster below reads "Tenth Anniversary of his Martyrdom: His Murderers Continue Without Being Tried" and underneath it reads "Orlando Zapata Tamayo: Martyr  for the Liberation of the Cuban people" followed by his birth date and the day he died.

Black lives matter, without question but the question that necessarily arises is do they matter everywhere, regardless of ideology? 

It necessarily arises because the leadership of the Black Lives Matter organization, despite the above examples (which are the tip of the iceberg) never raised these cases, but instead mourned the death of Fidel Castro in November 2016 and more shockingly defended what today is a old, male and white minority dictatorship in Cuba. 

Will progressives speak up about continuing injustices against black Cubans such as Silverio Portal Contreras, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, who is now serving a four-year prison sentence for "contempt" and "public disorder"? He was beaten by prison officials in mid-May 2020 and lost sight in one eye.

Do black lives matter in Cuba? Is the monstrous Cuban police state what progressives want to turn the United States into? 

Message from imprisoned opposition leader Leopoldo López to Venezuelan workers on their day

"Today Venezuelan workers nationwide march with the students! We all want the same thing! Freedom!"  - Gabriel Lugo, student leader over twitter on May 1, 2014

Democratic resistance protest march in Venezuela on May 1, 2014

Workers and students joined together in a common front to march for their rights today on May 1, 2014 and in protest against the Maduro regime. On April 28, 2014 Leopoldo López  from prison backed the May Day march: "This May 1st lets all go out to protest. Never have there been so many reasons for our workers to manifest themselves." Leopoldo's wife Lillian took part in the march and called for continued action. On April 30, 2014 students, labor unions and guilds gathered together and mobilized tens of thousands for the May Day march with the hashtag: #thestreetwillnotbesilenced. During today's protests dozens of demonstrators were detained by Maduro's security forces. In addition and ominously two human rights organizations had their offices raided today. Today, jailed opposition leader Leopoldo López made public the following letter outlining the situation and calling for a common resistance front. 

Leopoldo López in Ramo Verde prison

LETTER TO VENEZUELAN WORKERS ON THEIR DAY

From the military prison in Ramo Verde, where I am unjustly imprisoned by a dictatorship that seeks to silence legitimate protest by workers through blackmail, judicial persecution and labor militias I want to extend my message of firmness and support in the struggle for their claims that is also our struggle.

On May 1, 1886 , in the city of Chicago, a front of workers began a day of  nonviolent protests in favor of a maximum 8-hour workday under the slogan "eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and 8 hours for the family. " This peaceful protest was brutally repressed and its leaders executed. But the force of reason ended by imposing itself over the logic of force and a few years later workers won a resounding victory when most of the laws in the world consecrated the 8-hour work day and May 1 went on record as the day of the workers. 

One hundred and twenty eight years later the government of Nicolás Maduro persecutes, fires and jails workers who refuse to give up their freedoms of association, collective bargaining and protest as mechanisms to improve their living conditions amidst the resounding failure of the socialist economic model and its legacy of inflation, shortages, destruction of national employment and criminalization of public protest including those of the workers.

The minimum wage, even after the insufficient increase announced by Maduro, is the lowest in the region. 85 dollars compared to 487 in Panama , 300 in Colombia, 338 in Ecuador, 265 in Peru and 171 dollars in Bolivia. Only in Cuba , where workers are unfortunately a sort of slave labor exploited by the Cuban government , the minimum wage is lower than in Venezuela (10 dollars) . 

The shortage exceeds 30 percent and workers and their families are denigrated and make long lines to buy commodities. Inflation in food reaches the inhuman figure of 80 percent. In recent months, it has paralyzed much of the national productive apparatus as a result of the lack of foreign currency that for years were devoted to an unsustainable expansion of imported consumer goods at the expense of domestic production. Today, the dictatorship mocks employers and employees in the national economy with promises of a currency that never arrives while there are plants stopped and workers in their homes. 

It is the consequence of an economic production model at odds with production and national employment and addicted to imports that has served to buy the loyalty of governments who, in exchange for getting markets for their products, are willing to tolerate in Venezuela an autocratic regime they would never accept in their countries. I do not hesitate to say that the big losers of the disaster of Maduro have been Venezuelan producers and workers.

But its not only the dismal performance of the dictatorship, which should unite in this fight. It is above all the systematic violations of freedom of Venezuelan workers , especially our public workers union. The right to bargain collectively in the State is in practice suspended and who raise their voices for the enforcement of contracts or the precarious state of public companies are dismissed, prosecuted and jailed . Representatives of the workers are marginalized from the social dialogue. 

The vast majority of workers rejected the application of a socioeconomic model that keeps basic political and trade union freedoms confiscated. They are trying to impose in Venezuela the Chinese - Cuban model: cheap labor and without rights in service to the State and international capital. 

Trade union freedom can only exist in the context of a democratic and pluralistic model of labor relations in the framework of the Rule of Law that guarantees the full exercise of all civil liberties and rights of all. Trade union freedom is an illusion when one is before a government that in addition to employer is labor inspector, judge, police and electoral rector and uses all its power to destroy the autonomy of trade unions and place them in service of the failed project .

 I am convinced that economic and social progress of all Venezuelans is only possible to achieve in a climate of civil liberties and that necessarily involves the articulation of all political and social forces in a common front that would achieve a substitution of the dictatorship led by Nicolás Maduro, through peaceful and constitutional means . Workers and students must be at the forefront of the front along with the political parties.

Today those of us who believe and are ready to defend freedom must unite in the same struggle . Freedom is indivisible and only fighting for it together can we conquer it. Freedom when it starts to disappear when it is most needed, and in Venezuela the lack of freedoms is a reality that affects millions of Venezuelans every day. Let us unite in one front in the same struggle and in the same purpose: that all rights be for all the people , without exceptions and without privileges. 

Leopoldo López 

Ramo Verde military prison 

May 1, 2014


Texto original en castellano.