"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Fidel Castro celebró el quincuagésimo aniversario de un acto de violencia que condujo al establecimiento de su régimen en Cuba con discursos, marchas, y fiestas. El cincuenta aniversario de la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos fue conmemorado en Cuba con las golpeaduras y los arrestos de activistas. Hace 55 años que la delegación cubana, representando una república democrática y constitucional, escribió el primer borrador de la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos. Reconocieron que este documento hubiera sido 'aceptado por ese espíritu generoso que fue el Apóstol de nuestra independencia, José Martí, el héroe que --mientras convirtió su patria en nación-- nos dio para siempre esta generosa regla: 'Con todos y para el bien de todos' ''.
Esta república había abolido la Enmienda Platt, proveído una jornada laboral diaria de ocho horas, el derecho a la huelga, autonomía universitaria y tenía un espacio público con un gran número de periódicos y estaciones de radio con puntos de vista políticos e ideológicos diversos.
El 10 de marzo de 1952 Fulgencio Batista destruyó el orden constitucional e hirió la república, estableciendo una dictadura. El pueblo cubano, escandalizado ante tal asalto a la joven república, sucumbió al encanto del carismático y capaz joven abogado que prometía el retorno a la democracia y el constitucionalismo a punta de pistola. El 1 de enero de 1959 arribó al poder y ha permanecido ahí desde entonces. ¿Y qué sucedió con los valores de José Martí, con los hombres que redactaron el primer borrador de la Declaración, y ésos que de buena fe usaron la violencia para efectuar cambios democráticos? No les fue bien.
Un ejemplo, entre muchos, es el de Mario Chanes de Armas. Mario Chanes de Armas es uno de los fundadores del Movimiento 26 de Julio y junto a Castro sobrevivió el ataque al Moncada. Ambos, Mario y Fidel Castro, sobrevivientes de ese ataque, sirvieron juntos una sentencia en prisión por dos años, se entrenaron en México, regresaron a Cuba en el yate Granma, e incluso, Mario llegó a encontrarse en la ciudad de La Habana para el recibimiento a Castro el 8 de enero de 1959. Mario pudo haber obtenido cualquier puesto en el nuevo régimen, pero optó por regresar a su viejo trabajo en una cervecería. Por dos años observó a Fidel Castro traicionar el movimiento. Finalmente, se declaró en contra de la creciente influencia comunista en el nuevo régimen. Fue enjuiciado como ''contrarrevolucionario'' y el 17 de julio de 1961 sentenciado a treinta años en prisión. Después de pasar seis años en solitario, fue liberado treinta años más tarde.
Los hombres y mujeres que combatieron a la dictadura de Batista encontraron que lo que ellos esperaban fuera un renacimiento de la república cubana se convirtió en la pesadilla de otra dictadura. Desde la resistencia urbana a las montañas del Escambray, ellos combatieron con coraje durante seis años, con las bajas en ambos lados siendo más altas que entre 1952-1959. Al final de este período, la oposición se encontraba exiliada, dentro de prisiones o sepultada en cementerios, víctima de los paredones de fusilamiento.
Sin embargo, dentro de las prisiones se forjó el movimiento de derechos humanos en Cuba. Un movimiento que reconoció el poder de la resistencia cívica, tal como fue ejecutada por Martin Luther King Jr., al practicarla en las prisiones, y valorar en ella una manera de movilizar a la aterrada población cubana. Este movimiento emergió de las cárceles y creció llegando a ser un movimiento de lucha cívica a nivel nacional que reta el monopolio de la dictadura con el poder político. Tiene como sus medios y fines una lucha cívica no violenta, que educa a ciudadanos, reconstruyendo una cultura democrática atrofiada por el largo tiempo en desuso y que reclama derechos humanos, rehúsa el cooperar con las injusticias y reta la autoridad de la dictadura para reprimir al pueblo cubano. El movimiento deja al descubierto las contradicciones internas de la dictadura comunista al demandar a esa misma dictadura que respete los aspectos democráticos de su propia constitución que nunca pretendió implementar.
El régimen se enfrenta a dos opciones: arriesgar una apertura política, algo que no desea considerar porque sabe no lo sobreviviría, o violar sus propias leyes y dejar al descubierto sus acciones fuera de la ley. La ola de represión ha expuesto la debilidad de la dictadura. Oswaldo Payá describe: ''Lo que vemos, con estos arrestos, es el capítulo final de este sistema''. Laurent Fabius, socialista francés prominente y anterior primer ministro bajo François Mitterrand, se preocupa de que los ''americanos tienen un interés en ser los únicos opositores del régimen de Castro porque tendrán mayor acceso a los recursos de la isla cuando caiga el régimen'', e indica que el último capítulo del castrismo puede ser más corto de lo que nos imaginamos.
Originally published in The Miami Herald on Sat, July 26, 2003
Nonviolent activists writing Castro's final chapter by John Suarez
Today, Fidel Castro will celebrate with rallies and speeches the 50th anniversary of the violent act that helped establish his dictatorship. In 1998 the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was observed by beating and arresting activists.
Fifty-five years ago, a Cuban delegation representing a constitutional republic wrote the first draft of the Universal Declaration. It provided an eight-hour work day; the right to strike; university independence; and had large numbers of newspapers and radio stations with diverse political and ideological viewpoints.
After Fulgencio Batista destroyed the constitutional order with his dictatorship, the Cuban people fell for a charismatic young lawyer who promised the return of democracy through violence. On Jan. 1, 1959 Castro came to power and has remained there 44 years.
What of the values of the men who, in good faith, used violence to effect democratic change? They did not fare so well. Mario Chanes de Armas, for example, survived the Moncada barracks attack -- whose anniversary is today -- along with Fidel Castro. The two served in prison, trained in Mexico and returned to Cuba on the Granma yacht to defeat Batista.
Chanes could have had any position in the new regime, but opted to return to his brewery job. After two years of watching Castro betray their movement, Chanes spoke out against the communist influence. Chanes was tried as a counterrevolutionary and imprisoned for 30 years.
The men and women who battled Batista's dictatorship had hoped for the restoration of Cuba's Constitution of 1940 and its republic. They got a totalitarian dictatorship instead. They then fought Castro for six years in a civil war with casualties on both sides substantially higher than the struggle against Batista. This opposition ended up in exile, graves or imprisoned. Within those cells, Cuba's human-rights movement was forged.
A movement that saw the power of nonviolent resistance exercised by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. practiced it in Castro's dungeons and saw it as a means to mobilize the Cuban populace. It grew into a national civic movement challenging the dictatorship's monopoly of power.
Its means and ends are a civic, nonviolent struggle that educates citizens, rebuilds democratic culture, reclaims human rights, refuses to accept injustice and challenges repression. Members expose the dictatorship's internal contradictions by demanding that it respect the democratic provisions of its own constitution.
Dr. Michael Nagler is the founder of the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Berkeley, CA. He teaches two courses on Nonviolence at University of California, BerkeleyINTRODUCTION TO NONVIOLENCE (PACS 164A) and NONVIOLENCE TODAY (PACS 164B) which is available on YouTube. In the video above Nagler offers an analysis of nonviolence and property destruction which is within the Gandhian tradition, and should be of interest to nonviolent civic activists.
Reflections on Nonviolence and the Situation in Tibet by John Suarez
Originally published on March 16, 2008 the escalating repression and violence against the nonviolent democratic opposition in Cuba led me to return to my thoughts last year when the Chinese communists intensified their brutalization of Tibetans and reproduce the essay below.
Before entering into a meditation on the ongoing events in Tibet it is important to place it in context. Tibet was invaded by Communist China in 1949 and ten years later a nationwide uprising was crushed and since then there has been a process of ethnic genocide carried out against the Tibetan people. Attempts at dialogue and nonviolent resistance over the past 49 years have been met with more repression and more violence. Today, protests in Tibet and international protests in solidarity are appearing in news headlines all over the world. Some in the international media have irresponsibly referred to this as a " Tibetan Intifada " and focused on isolated acts of violence. What has been seen on television is property destruction and overturned cars. Although within strategic nonviolence property destruction is not viewed as necessarily violent it does open itself up to that interpretation. This has played into the hands of the Chinese occupation authorities to defend their use of violence to extra-judicially execute scores of Tibetans, and to make claims of murderous violence by Tibetans. The spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama, has called the alleged violence carried out by Tibetans an " act of suicide ." The world is seeing once again Mahatma Gandhi's observation that "violence always thrived on counter violence." For the past 50 years the Dalai Lama has embraced nonviolent resistance as the means to confront the Chinese occupier. He understood that Mahatma Gandhi, in the twentieth century, "produced a very sophisticated approach because he implemented that very noble philosophy of nonviolence in modern politics, and he succeeded. That is a very great thing. It has represented an evolutionary leap in political consciousness, his experimentation with truth ."
But what is Gandhi's noble philosophy? To sum it up in one word it is satyagraha. According to Gandhi " its root meaning is holding onto truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of satyagraha , I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself ." Applied to politics it is manifested as civil disobedience . Gandhi described civil disobedience as "not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion."
The trouble with the events in Tibet is that no matter how minimal the violence it will contaminate the resistance as a whole and diminish its effectiveness and legitimacy while at the same time offering the oppressor a free hand to up the repression. Those voices and activists supporting the burning of cars and looting of stores in defense of Tibetan independence are doing great harm to the cause. The Dalai Lama has appealed " to the Chinese leadership to stop using force and address the long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people through dialogue with the Tibetan people. I also urge my fellow Tibetans not to resort to violence ." The Dalai Lama is not calling on Tibetans to cease their protests but to protest and resist non-violently . The media seems to find the two ideas (nonviolence and resistance) to be in contradiction. Mahatma Gandhi on the other hand finds no contradiction stating that "civil disobedience does not admit of any violence or countenancing of violence directly or indirectly."
To those advocating a Tibetan Intifada today they should recall Gandhi's observations during the Indian struggle for independence from Britian that "popular violence is as much an obstruction in our path [to independence] as the Government violence" and "what senseless violence does is to prolong the lease of life of British or any foreign rule." As it applied to India then so does it apply to China's occupation of Tibet now. Finally they should recall that the Palestinian Intifada has not achieved the goal of an independent Palestinian state. Permitting violent rock throwers to associate with the larger non-violent movement as was done in Palestine is a strategic mistake of the first order. Do not allow justified frustrations with the evil actions of the Chinese occupation to explode into violence that will only serve the interests of an extremely well armed adversary.
As the 50th anniversary of the arrival of totalitarianism to Cuba draws to a close it seems an appropriate time to reflect on the alternative that has emerged in Cuba: the nonviolent democratic opposition. The following is the presentation made by Carlos Alberto Montaner earlier this year, along with video footage in Spanish from February 3, 2009 and from December 28, 2009. It is a time for reflection in order to prepare for action.
Cuba and the democratic opposition
Carlos Alberto Montaner
Cuba, two perspectives: The European Union and Cubans Association of Ibero-Americans for Freedom Casa de América, Madrid, Feb. 3, 2009
The Association of Ibero-Americans for Freedom, presided by Dr. Antonio Guedes, has asked me to share with you some reflections about the Cuban democratic opposition. I accept the challenge but begin by saying that I cannot speak on behalf of the dozens of organizations that, inside and outside the island, have their points of view and strategies, as befits a complex society with a certain degree of sophistication, although I believe I maintain excellent relations with most of their leaders. Therefore, my opinions should be accepted only as the personal criteria of someone who, for the past several decades, has not ceased to pay attention and give aid to those groups intent on achieving the establishment in Cuba of a pluralistic political regime that respects individual freedoms and human rights.
In any case, this seems to me to be an extremely important topic, given that the Cuban dictatorship, as part of its strategy of immobility, insists on picturing the opposition as a pitiful gang of fascists at the service of the United States, for the purpose of demonstrating that there is no better option to the communist government and that the Cubans on the island do not want it. Such statements run headlong against reality. The truth is that, within the democratic opposition, one can find all the factors of knowledge, moderation and common sense that will contribute very constructively to the transition to freedom.
The revolutionary tradition An inevitable observation ab initio is that the experience of half a century of communist dictatorship has totally changed the political behavior of the Cuban opposition. During the 57 years of our short republican experience, from the establishment of an independent state in 1902 until the collapse of the Batista dictatorship on Jan. 1, 1959, Cubans resorted to violence to solve their political crises or impose the will of the caudillos. This pushed us into abortive civil wars in 1906, 1912 and 1917, to the revolution of 1933, the military coup of 1952, and finally to the triumph of the revolution in 1959, with Fidel Castro as the country's "Maximum Leader," a title with which he was unctuously baptized at the time.
That tradition of violence continued during the early years of Castroism, when the opposition, through inertia and habit, attempted to halt the enthronement of the communist dictatorship by resorting to the conventional means of struggle that society used to practice and with which it had just liquidated Batista: armed landings, such as the one at Bay of Pigs in 1961; guerrilla uprisings, such as those on the Escambray mountain range (1961 to 1966); military conspiracies, sabotage and terrorist acts. None of this was surprising for the Cubans, given that a good many leaders of the struggle against communism were veterans of the war against Batista: Huber Matos, Manuel Artime, Humberto Sorí Marín, Manuel Ray, David Salvador, Porfirio Remberto Ramírez, Aldo Vera and a very long etcetera [2] that might include dozens of notable personalities who directed the early confrontations against Castroism.
This violent effort to forcibly replace the dominant elite (which, it must be said, left absolutely no space for civic struggle) lasted until approximately 1966, when the last foci of peasant guerrillas on the central mountains were exterminated. During that period, the government efficiently mounted an enormous repressive apparatus, a carbon copy of the Soviet model, which made it practically impossible for its enemies to turn to armed resistance for the purpose of overthrowing it.
A change in vision and behavior During the following decade, under the distant influence of the civil-rights struggle in the United States and the peaceful resistance of dissidents in communist Europe, a slow ideological and strategic evolution began in the ranks of the Cuban democratic opposition, which came to a notable turning point: the rise to power in Washington of President Jimmy Carter and his defense of human rights as the banner of U.S. foreign policy, in the spirit of the Helsinki Accords signed in the mid-1970s.
That pacifist and rational atmosphere, which rejected violence and vindicated democratic methods, led some oppositionists to realize that perhaps it was a historic error for Cubans to resort to force to try to solve their political crises. It might have been more sensible, they thought, to follow the road of negotiation and the search for mechanisms of consensus that might save the institutions from the shoals without the need to periodically topple the republican structures.
Finally, in 1976, half a dozen Cuban oppositionists 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 politologist Frank Calzón, founded Of Human Rights with the same objective: to defend, by peaceful and legal means, persecuted individuals, dissidents and political prisoners in Cuba.
That aggiornamento of the Cuban democratic opposition, which put it in step with the major civic-struggle movements that existed worldwide, had as a corollary another predictable evolution: the opposition began to move closer to the paradigms and political discourses of the main ideological currents that spread through the contemporary world, somehow evading the autochthonous political roots and the harmful dichotomy of "revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries."
Precisely in Madrid in 1990, a few short months after the toppling of the Berlin Wall, three political groups of exiles with some internal ramifications, steeped in a civic spirit and internationally linked to their respective party families, created the Cuban Democratic Platform [4] to try to propitiate a peaceful change to democracy. Shortly thereafter, this new ideological vision of political struggle began to propagate inside the island.
An opposition similar to that in the rest of democratic world In fact, the Cubans who today live in Cuba or abroad, display all the ideological hues that one might find in the parliaments of any Western country, except that the Cubans on the island must endure the constant harassment of the political police, while the exiles can defend their ideas without any fear. Roughly speaking, the current opposition has an abundance of Christian democrats, social democrats, liberals and conservatives. There are Green oppositionists, who are very concerned by the environmental destruction seen in their country; there are oppositionists who are deeply committed to the protection of respect for human rights, and there are union-minded oppositionists who vindicate the rights granted to workers.
Which of these tendencies is the most powerful? It may be futile to speculate on this issue. More than true political parties, what exists inside and outside Cuba are currents of opinion and some small structural streams that will eventually evolve into true, multitudinous political formations. In addition, these tendencies have effected a certain international linkage with similar parties and ideological institutions, the so-called "internationals," which helps develop clear ideological paradigms and public-policy recipes that are perfectly reasonable. All this will somehow guarantee the foreseeable evolution of post-Castroism.
This observation is very interesting because it belies the theory that the end of the communist dictatorship will lead to great political and economic chaos. That's not true. Most probably, the same theoretical schemes we saw in the countries that abandoned communism in eastern Europe will be reproduced in Cuba. The lectures and debates so common among opposition democrats point in that direction: they not only want to spur the end of communism but also have a very clear idea of the direction in which the country should move in a peaceful manner. Practically all of them think of a political model characterized by pluralism, tolerance, alternation in power, and subordination to the rules. What has disappeared from the Cubans' ideological mindset are veneration for caudillos and the cult of revolution.
The frozen regime Lamentably, the healthy evolution undergone by the democratic opposition is not present in the behavior of the dictatorship. Over and again, the government of the Castro brothers reiterates the hard line of the early days of the revolution, as if the world had become frozen in the schemes of the Cold War. As far as the ruling cupola is concerned, the Berlin Wall was never toppled, Marxism-Leninism remains in effect, and the entire propaganda efforts of its huge disinformation machine (endowed with the obscene language of the rankest Stalinist lineage) insists on picturing the democratic opposition as an artificial appendix created by the United States, and opposition leaders as "the Miami mafia," composed of terrorist gangs in the service of the CIA.
Nevertheless, there is very clear evidence that, under the surface, the attitude that really prevails among government supporters, many of them in the ruling class, totally diverges from the official line. In this regard, the recent statements made by singer-composer Pablo Milanés [5] to a Spanish newspaper, as interpreted by the finest experts in the intricacies of Cuban society and the doublespeak used in Cuba, [6] constitute a lot more than an isolated opinion; they represent the point of view of a huge majority of the Cuban Communist Party, whose most important segment acknowledges -- to varying degrees -- what we might call a "willingness to reform." Among many of them, that attitude does not exclude political pluralism and an end to Marxist-Leninist collectivism, as shown by a survey [7] done last November by the party at the University of Havana, but never published. The survey revealed that only 8 percent of all professors and barely 22 percent of the students espouse the orthodox point of view propounded by Fidel and Raúl Castro.
The end of an era How will the Cuban dictatorship end? Probably the way it happened in several countries that managed to orderly bury their old and obsolete dictatorships: through a reform inside the very structure of power, a reform that quickly and gradually will broaden the channels of societal participation, until the old regime is peacefully dismantled through various democratic procedures. That's what happened in Spain, Hungary, Poland and most communist countries in eastern Europe. There is a high probability that something similar will occur in Cuba.
When? The first step will be the burial of Fidel Castro, the true obstacle to any symptom of sensibility and common sense. The second will come with the enactment of the reformist moves that will presumably be advocated by Raúl Castro at the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party, scheduled for the second half of 2009. [8] The third will come when the democratic opposition can begin to act with greater freedom inside the country. From that time on, it is very likely that events will precipitate in ways that today are unpredictable but that will eventually fling the dictatorship into the dustbin of history. What seems unquestionable is the fact that Cuba can no longer remain a Marxist-Leninist exception in an era when that option was totally forsaken as a consequence of its errors, abuses and legendary unproductivity.
The same, or something very similar, will happen in Cuba. And when we do a balance sheet on the effects of this nigh-eternal nightmare, we might come to the conclusion that so much sacrifice has brought us an unexpected gain: we Cubans have learned that revolutionary violence, caudillism and intolerance always lead to the worst of all possible fates. Fortunately, the time to rectify these nefarious behaviors is close at hand.
NOTES
1. Carlos Alberto Montaner is a writer and journalist. He is president of the Cuban Liberal Union and vice president of the Liberal International. He has published some 25 books and hundreds of articles. His latest title, released in 2008, is “Cuba: The battle of ideas.”
2. Dr. Huber Matos (teacher and commander in the Sierra Maestra campaign); Dr. Manuel Artime (physician and lieutenant in Sierra Maestra; later, civilian chief of the Brigade 2506 expeditionists who landed in Bay of Pigs); Humberto Sorí Marín (lawyer and commander in Sierra Maestra, author of the text of the first agrarian reform carried out by the revolution; he was executed by firing squad in April 1961); Manuel Ray (engineer and Minister of Public Works in the first revolutionary Cabinet; chief of Civic Resistance, an organization in the service of the 26 July Movement; later, creator of the People’s Revolutionary Movement, which opposed communist dictatorship); David Salvador (labor leader of the 26 July Movement and, after the triumph of the revolution, Secretary General of the Federation of Cuban Workers; when he turned against communism, he created the 30 November Movement); Porfirio Ramírez (student leader and captain in the rebel army during the struggle against Batista; he led the Federation of University Students in Las Villas before being executed by the government in 1960); Aldo Vera Serafín (police commander in Havana after the triumph of the revolution; former chief of Action and Sabotage in Havana. He was assassinated in Puerto Rico in 1976 by the Cuban intelligence services.)
3. Bofill had been a member of the Communist Party but had landed in prison after a trial called “the microfraction,” accused of conspiring to limit the authority of Castro supporters. The other five members were Adolfo Rivero Caro, Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz, Edmigio López Castillo, Enrique Hernández Méndez and Dr. Marta Frayde. A short while later, the group was joined by brothers Gustavo and Sebastián Arcos, prestigious figures in the struggle against Batista. All of them were sentenced to long prison terms.
4. The three political groups that formed the Cuban Democratic Platform were the Christian Democratic Party (linked to the Christian Democratic International), represented by its president, José Ignacio Rasco; the Social Democratic Coordinator (with some incipient links to the Socialist International), represented by Enrique Baloyra; and the Cuban Liberal Union, a member of the Liberal International, headed by Carlos Alberto Montaner. Other, non-political groups were also present at the event.
5. See Público.es, Dec. 29, 2008, (http://www.publico.es/culturas/186756/socialismo/cubano/estancado), an interview done by journalist Carlos Fuentes. In it, Pablo Milanés not only criticizes the government openly but also declares his total mistrust of the gerontocracy that rules the country.
6. A few months after Milanés’ statements, the so-called “war of the e-mails” broke out. A group of writers and artists who belonged to the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) utilized the Internet to harshly reproach two former functionaries in the culture sector – Luis Pavón and Jorge “Papito” Serguera – for their cruelly repressive acts during the so-called “Gray Quinquennium” in the first half of the 1970s. In reality, the rebuke was a shot fired in the air to complain about the current situation without running great risk, because the desire for deep changes felt by the intellectuals is practically unanimous.
7. The results of the survey remain unpublished but have been learned abroad thanks to the cooperation of European embassies accredited in Havana. As interesting as the overwhelming number of reformers who express their disconformity with the system is the fact that most of them are not satisfied with reforming the regime -- they believe in the need for a radical change in the system.
8. In the extended discussions prior to that long-awaited Congress (the last one was held in 1997 and culminated in enormous frustration), the criticism against the government and the clumsiness of the public administration has been copious and has been heard throughout the island.
Discurso del Embajador de Panamá Guillermo Cochez ante la OEA sobre lo que sucede en América Latina
The opening remarks by the Ambassador Cochez are priceless:
Thank you very much Mr. President. Some of these interventions reminds me of an anecdote from my student days at univesity. Where they asked what would be the reaction of a right winger, a Christian Democrat, and a communist to his wife's infidelity: the right winger would beat her up; that the Christian Democrat would sit down with her and say to her "my love try not to have this happen again", and the communist would go look for some rocks and throw them at the Embassy of the United States. This in reality appears to be what happens with a few of my colleagues.
SPEECH DELIVERED BY MR. OSWALDO PAYÁ UPON ACCEPTING THE SAKHAROV PRICE FOR FREEDOM OF THOUGHT
Strasbourg, 17 December 2002
First of all, I should like to express my thanks to Mr. Pat Cox, President, and to this Parliament in which the many peoples of Europe are represented.
You have awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize to the people of Cuba. I say “the people of Cuba” because they are the ones who so richly deserve such an award. I say it without excluding any of my fellow countrymen, irrespective of their political stance, because rights have no political, racial or cultural hue. Nor have dictatorships any political color: they are neither right-wing nor left-wing, they are merely dictatorships. In my country there are thousands of men and women who are fighting in the midst of persecution for the rights of all Cubans. Hundreds of them have been imprisoned solely for having proclaimed and stood up for those rights, and this is why I am receiving this award on their behalf.
I say that this prize is for all Cubans because I believe that, in awarding it, Europe wishes to say to them: “You too are entitled to rights.”
This is something which we have always firmly believed, but there are times when this truth has seemed to be less than self-evident to many of the world’s people.
I have not come here to ask you to support those who oppose the Cuban Government or to condemn those who persecute us. It is of no help to Cuba that some people in the world side with the country’s government or with the latter’s opponents on the basis of an ideological standpoint. We want others to side with the Cuban people - with all Cubans – and this means upholding all their rights, supporting openness, supporting our demand that our people should be consulted via the ballot box regarding the changes we are calling for. We are asking for solidarity so that our people can be given an opportunity to speak through the ballot box, as proposed in the Varela Project.
Many people have linked this prize to the Varela Project, and rightly so, since the thousands of Cubans who, in the midst of repression, have signed the petition calling for a referendum are making a decisive contribution to bringing about the changes which Cuba needs. Those changes would mean involvement in cultural and economic life, civil and political rights, and national reconciliation. That would constitute a genuine exercise in self-determination by our people. We must reject the myth that we Cubans have to live without rights in order to support our country’s independence and sovereignty.
Father Felix Varela has taught us that independence and national sovereignty are inseparable from the exercise of basic rights. We Cubans – whether we live in Cuba or in the diaspora – are a single people and we have both the determination and the ability to build a just, free and democratic society, without hatred and without the desire for revenge. In the words of José Marti, ‘With everyone and for everyone’s benefit’.
We have not chosen the path of peace as a tactic, but because it is inseparable from the goal for which our people are striving. Experience teaches us that violence begets more violence and that when political change is brought about by such means, new forms of oppression and injustice arise. It is our wish that violence and force should never be used as ways of overcoming crises or toppling unjust governments. This time we shall bring about change by means of this civic movement which is already opening a new chapter in Cuba’s history, in which dialogue, democratic involvement, and solidarity will prevail. In such a way we shall foster genuine peace. Cuba’s civic combatant heroes – the ordinary people who have signed the Varela Project – carry no weapons. Not a single hand is armed. We walk with both arms outstretched, offering our hands to all Cubans as brothers and sisters, and to all peoples of the world.
The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING.
There are still those who perpetuate the myth that the exercising of political and civil rights is an alternative to a society’s ability to achieve social justice and development. They are not mutually exclusive. The absence of any civil and political rights in Cuba has had serious consequences such as inequality, the poverty of the majority and privileges of a minority and the deterioration of certain services, even though these were conceived as a positive system to benefit the people. In this way, although many Cubans have for years worked out of love and in good faith, the situation as regards civil and political rights is now serious, quite apart from a widening inequality and the deterioration in the quality of life of the majority of the population. Among other things, the freedom of action of the citizens of Cuba has been limited, which has neutralized their huge potential for creativity and productiveness and is the main reason for the country’s poverty.
This state of affairs cannot be justified by saying that the Cuban people have adopted this system out of choice. You all know that none of the peoples represented in this Parliament, and no people in the world, would ever give up the right to exercise their fundamental freedoms.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that well-being and economic and social progress are the fruits of being able to exercise one’s rights. In the same way, a democracy is not genuine and complete if it cannot initiate and sustain a process that raises the quality of life of all its citizens, because no people would freely vote for the kind of poverty and inequality that results in the masses becoming disadvantaged and marginalized. The peoples of Latin America are calling for a genuine democracy which will enable justice to be established. It is scandalous that methods intended to overcome a crisis and end poverty can be applied in the name of efficiency when in reality they threaten to obliterate the poor. I cannot claim to herald new positions or propose new models, but the people of Cuba have lived and suffered under various political and economic systems.
We now know that any method or model which purportedly aims to achieve justice, development, and efficiency but takes precedence over the individual or cancels out any of the fundamental rights leads to a form of oppression and to exclusion and is calamitous for the people. We wish to express our solidarity with all those who suffer from any form of oppression and injustice, and with those in the world who have been silenced or marginalized.
The cause of human rights is a single cause, just as the people of the world are a single people. The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized. If there is no solidarity between people we will be unable to preserve a fair world in which it is possible to continue living as human beings. I therefore humbly believe that rather than new models, both for societies and for relations between countries, what we need is a new spirit.
This new spirit, which should find expression in solidarity, cooperation, and justice in the relations between countries, will not impede development, because if policies and models are made secondary to personal realization and the establishment of justice and democracy, and if policies are humanized, we will bridge the gulfs that divide peoples and will become a true human family.
We bring from Cuba a message of peace and solidarity for all peoples. The people of Cuba accept this prize with dignity and in the hope that we can rebuild our society with love for all, as brothers, and as children of God. Cubans are straightforward people and want nothing more than to live in peace and progress in our work, but WE CANNOT, WE DO NOT KNOW HOW TO, AND WE DO NOT WANT TO LIVE WITHOUT FREEDOM.
We dedicate this prize and our hopes to the Lord Jesus, born in a lowly manger.
"Tolerance and human rights require each other." - Simon Wiesenthal
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be either good or evil." - Hannah Arendt
It is understandable at a time when newspapers are in crisis and suffering cutbacks that professionals could get a story wrong, but the coverage of the attacks against the Ladies in White and other dissidents on International Human Rights Day save some notable exceptions swallowed the regime line of "pro-government mobs and government supporters" that in reality does not exist without even a question. The history of the creation and development of "acts of repudiation" has been well documented.
Acts of repudiation were first seen in 1980 during the Mariel crisis when Cubans who simply wanted to leave the country were brutally assaulted and forty lost their lives in lynchings. A refugee at the time of Mariel Mirta Ojito, now a journalist and author, described what she had seen and experienced in an opinion piece for the New York Times:
Mariel marked the first time socialist Cuba turned against itself. Thegovernment staged riots called actos de repudio -- street rallies inwhich neighbors turned against neighbors, harassing and tormenting those who wanted to leave the country. The victims were often pelted with rocks, tomatoes and eggs. Windows were shattered. Doors were knocked down. Some people were killed, dragged through the streets as trophies to intolerance and hate. Sometimes people trapped inside their homes chose to kill themselves rather than face their tormentors.
Acts of repudiation [Actos de repudio] these are meetings or demonstrations organized by government officials or mass organizations supporting the government at which the person or persons concerned are
subjected to criticism and abuse, sometimes physical, because of their so-called counter-revolutionary views or activities.
The Cuban government is not static. Repression and the tactics change and evolve over time with one aim maintaining absolute power. When Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union began to transition to democracy in the late 1980s culminating in the peaceful dissolution of the USSR in 1991 the dictatorship in Cuba responded through a number of different initiatives one of them was to further refine "acts of repudiation" with the creation of the Brigadas de Respuesta Rápida "Rapid Response Brigades"to prepare for potential unrest and stepped-up dissident activity under the direction of the MININT (Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior).According to AI the:
Rapid Response Brigades, [Brigadas de Respuesta Rápida] were set up in 1991 to defend the country, the Revolution and socialism in all circumstances, by confronting and liquidating any sign of counter-revolution or crime and were subsequently involved in numerous violent confrontations with dissidents.
These are not spontaneous "pro-government mobs" but individuals transported by the dictatorship and instructed to attack those who dissent from the government line as was seen on International Human Rights Day where the violence was surgically directed against women standing up for their husbands who are Amnesty International prisoners of conscience and demonstrators and observers at a second demonstration. These individuals are not neighbors or supporters of the government who spontaneously appear to counter the demonstration. They are part of a “unified system of vigilance and protection (SUVP)” that comprise members of Committees in Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), mass organizations, and in some cases taken from their workplaces and obligated to participate to keep their jobs and are organized and directed by Cuban State Security. According to Human Rights Watch the Cuban government "employs so-called repudiation meetings (mitines de repudio), or acts of repudiation, to humiliate and intimidate dissidents publicly, sometimes violently." A more detailed description emerges in a 1998 report by Douglas Payne:
Their principle mission is to carry out acts of repudiation, which entail violent mob actions against dissidents or suspected dissidents, their homes, and any public demonstration of dissent. The mobs can involve up to hundreds of people who wield chains, bats and lengths of pipe. They shout slogans and threats, throw rocks and other crude missiles, deface homes with graffiti and otherwise damage property. The mobs are frequently invasive, breaking down doors and windows to carry out physical attacks against the occupants.
The participants in these neo-fascist attacks are probably taking part in this violent propaganda exercise in the Cuban dictatorship's version of Orwell's 2 minutes hate to avoid being on the receiving end of such an action themselves. For example during an act of repudiation on August 24, 2005 against Bertha Antunez the mob stopped the action when Bertha began to play Willy Chirino's "Ya Viene Llegando" and began to dance in the street. These are not regime supporters driven into an ideological frenzy to attack dissidents. They are people, in many cases brought by bus often times from work, and obligated by the government to attack other Cubans. It is the height of cowardice both for the Cuban government and the individuals taking part in the attacks and it is not a sign of regime strength but of fear that they will lose control.
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.” – Thomas Jefferson
On April 25, 2000 at 7:30pm at the height of the Elian controversry, approximately 1,500 Cubans marched from Ocean Drive and 10th Street on South Beach to the Holocaust Memorial in a silent march to ask for forgiveness for a great crime. If one believes as Martin Luther King Jr. did that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” then praying for mercy and asking for forgiveness for a great wrong is a necessity. Although the participants in the march knew what the purpose was the press preferred to focus on the Elian controversy and not the act of contrition. May 27 - June 6, 1939 spanned the period 70 years ago when corrupt Cuban officials extorted desperate Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and then thanks to popular anti-immigrant fervor refused to grant them safe harbor leading the ship to try its luck with the United States only to be denied and forced to return to Europe where many of the passengers would later perish in gas chambers of the holocaust.
Looking over the literature on this black spot in Cuban history there are a number of lessons to be learned that can be applied even today, and there is a need to apologize for a great wrong committed by the Cuban people against these 938 passengers aboard the S.S. St. Louis. Political corruption, envy, and the manipulation of public sentiment by agents of a totalitarian regime led to a voyage of refugees seeking freedom into what became known as a voyage of the damned.
As usual in Cuban history there are those who try to blame the United States for the actions of the Cuban officials, but as time passes and new documents are released that charge is without a serious basis. The U.S. State Department was trying to pressure the Cuban government to take the Jewish refugees so that the United States would not be placed in the position of having to accept the refugees.
Fulgencio Batista and President Federico Laredo Brú (1938)
The Strongman, The President, and the Director of Immigration
The Cuban Republic founded in 1902 suffered political instability that led to an elected President Gerardo Machado changing the Constitution to be able to run for re-election and in effect become a dictator which led to the revolution of 1933. The revolution of 1933 had placed Fulgencio Batista in the position as strong man with Presidents in office that he essentially had impeachment power over. For example,Dr. Federico Laredo Brú had been elected Vice President in 1936 on the same ticket as President Miguel Mariano Gomez, son of former president José Miguel Gómez who won the presidential election, but when he vetoed a bill to create rural schools under army control that Fulgencio Batista had wanted passed the strong man, engineered his impeachment in December of1936 and Laredo Brú would serve out Gomez’s term. He was the nominal president controlled by strongman Batista when the S.S. St. Louis arrived in Cuba on May 27, 1939.
The Great Depression and the economic downturn created an anti-immigrant environment around the world. In Cuba this manifested itself in early 1939 with the passage of Decree 55 which drew a distinction between refugees and tourists. “The Decree stated that each refugee needed a visa and was required to pay a $500 bond to guarantee that they would not become wards of Cuba. But the Decree also said that tourists were still welcome and did not need visas. The Director-General of the Cuban immigration office, Manuel Benitez Gonzalez, realized that Decree 55 did not define a tourist or a refugee. He decided that he would take advantage of this loophole and make money by selling landing permits which would allow refugees to land in Cuba by calling them tourists. He sold these permits to anyone who would pay $150. According to U.S. estimates, Benitez Gonzalez had amassed a personal fortune of $500,000 to $1,000,000.Though only allowing someone to land as a tourist; these permits looked authentic, were even individually signed by Benitez Gonzalez, and generally were made to look like visas. His small fortune created resentment and envy in the bureaucracy that would eventually force him to resign.
Manuel Benitez Gonzalez was also a protégé of Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista, and was most likely providing the strongman a kickback. On May 5, Decree 937 was passed which closed the loophole Benitez Gonzalez had exploited. Without knowing it, almost every passenger on the S.S. St. Louis had purchased a landing permit for an inflated rate but by the time they arrived in Cuba those permits had already been nullified by Decree 937.
The argument has been made that pro-Franco sentiment explains the rejection of the Jewish refugees and anti-semitic demonstrations. This requires ignoring that under Franco's brutal dictatorship, during the entire Second World War especially after 1942, Spanish borders were kept open for Jewish refugees from Vichy France and Nazi-occupied territories in Europe. Furthermore that Franco's diplomats extended their diplomatic protection over Sephardic Jews in Hungary, Slovakia and the Balkans. Spain was a safe haven for all Jewish refugees and antisemitism was not official policy under the Franco regime. What happened in Cuba?
According to the Jewish Virtual Library: "Goebbels had decided to use the S.S. St. Louis and her passengers in a master propaganda plan. Having sent agents to Havana to stir up anti-Semitism, Nazi propaganda fabricated and hyped the passengers' criminal nature - making them seem even more undesirable. The agents within Cuba stirred anti-Semitism and organized protests. Soon, an additional 1,000 Jewish refugees entering Cuba was seen as a threat."
The Cuban government admitted 28 passengers with proper identification. 22 of them were Jewish and had valid U.S. visas; the remaining six-four Spanish citizens and two Cuban nationals--had valid entry documents. One further passenger, after attempting to commit suicide, was evacuated to a hospital in Havana. The remaining 908 passengers were denied entry. In the end according to the Jewish Virtual Library it was about money. The Cuban government wanted $500 per refugee (approximately $500,000 in total). The same amount as required for any refugee to obtain a visa to Cuba. Several men claiming affiliation with the Cuban government, one identified himself as having powers to negotiate bestowed by President Brú. These men insisted that $400,000 to $500,000 were needed to ensure the St. Louis passengers' return to Cuba. The negotiators for the passengers believed that these men just wanted a cut in the profit by negotiating a higher price.
Around noon on Tuesday, June 6, President Brú closed negotiations. Through a misunderstanding, the money allotment had not been agreed upon and the negotiators had missed a 48 hour deadline that they didn't know existed. One day later, the negotiators offered to pay President Brú’s every demand but the President said it was too late. The option of landing in Cuba was officially closed. The refugees would go on to be rejected entry by the United States, Canada and return to Europe. 254 of the passengers would subsequently perish in the Nazi Holocaust. Worse yet the Nazis took the example of the rejection of the Jewish refugees as a sign first that forced emigration of their Jewish population as a solution was off the table and that the world would not care if they were exterminated.
There was what may have well been a final opportunity to remember the victims and ask for forgiveness of those who survived this ordeal this past Sunday, December 13, 2009 at the Eden Roc on Miami Beach were the survivors gathered to remember the 70th anniversary of the ill fated voyage. The testimony and experiences related were powerful and disturbing. Representatives from both Israel and Germany were present and spoke. Many of the survivors said that they had forgiven what had been done to them but that they would never forget. A profound injustice was committed against these Jewish refugees by the Cuban government at the time, and lamentably, although a new political order arrived in Cuba in 1959 bringing many new evils with it. The government in Havana today has carried on the worse of this legacy and compounded it in its non-stop propaganda attacks over the past half century against Israel. One of the low points under the current regime was during the Yom Kippur War were in 1973 Fidel Castro dispatched 500 Cuban tank commanders to try and destroy Israel not to mention the Cuban government's training and supplying of Arab terrorists.
Survivors of the 1939 SS St. Louis voyage gather in Miami Beach in 2009
