"Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer, and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it." - Mohandas Gandhi
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| "Era tanto el hambre que nos comimos el miedo." - "The hunger was so much that we ate the fear." |
Juan Enrique Pérez Sánchez, father of four and former phone technician, was arrested and badly beaten on July 12, 2021 after participating in the 11J protests in Nueva Paz, Mayabeque. He carried a poster that read "Down with the dictatorship" on one side, and "The hunger was so much that we ate the fear." Juan Enrique was sentenced to eight years in prison on December 15, 2021. He suffers from asthma and a herniated disc. Reports emerged over social media that Juan Enrique sowed his mouth shut with a wire, as a sign of protest.
Today in Cuba there are thousands of Cubans, like Juan Enrique, jailed for their nonviolent demand for an end to the Castro dictatorship expressed most widely during the July 2021 protests. Over a thousand have been identified that were jailed or disappeared. It is known that some have resorted to going on hunger strike to protest their unjust imprisonment. This is part of the movement's repertoire of nonviolent tactics to resist the dictatorship in Cuba.
The men and women in Cuba who have led protests across the island have maintained their non-violent posture, continue to call for civic resistance as the method to challenge the dictatorship, and are asking for active nonviolent solidarity from people of goodwill living abroad.
On July 27, 2021 the Christian Liberation Movement tweeted: "For solidarity with the freedom of Cubans. Eleven specific actions to isolate the regime." This Cuban based movement, with its national coordinator, a former Amnesty prisoner of conscience living in Cuba, said that although statements criticizing the dictatorship are welcome that now is also the time for actions to isolate the Castro regime internationally, and sanction both on the dictatorship collectively, and individual bad actors in the regime are needed. These efforts to raise the cost of repression too are part of strategic nonviolence, and requires international solidarity. Please share and support this campaign with others.
Por la solidaridad con la libertad de los cubanos. Once acciones concretas de aislamiento al régimen. Movimiento Cristiano Liberación https://t.co/upvduDXpZu
— MCL (@oswaldopaya) July 27, 2021
This is a moment in which many that have not been following the resistance movement on the island are advocating to do business with the dictatorship, and the children of the nomenklatura. This will only prolong the life of the dictatorship, and increase the likelihood of violence, and Cuba bottoming out as a failed state.
It is important to revisit recent Cuban history.
The opposition in Cuba violently resisted the Castro dictatorship from 1959 to 1966. In April of 1961 an expedition covertly supported by the United States was not provided sufficient air cover and support leading to their defeat, and the consolidation of communist rule in the island. Many of the Cubans who had fought alongside Castro, but felt betrayed when he installed a new dictatorship instead of restoring the democratic order, took up arms and went back into the hills. The new regime received counter insurgency forces from its Soviet allies that sent to battle the Cuban resistance in the Escambray after years of struggle in 1967.
Eusebio Peñalver with machine gun and Joaquin Membibre, with M-1 carbin
Eusebio Peñalver (pictured above) opposed the Batista regime and fought with the rebel army to restore Cuba's constitutional
democracy. Mary O'Grady wrote about him in 2013 and quoted the Cuban warrior.
"But when Castro hijacked the revolution for himself, Peñalver broke ranks rather than 'sell my soul to the same devil that here on earth is Castro and communism.'" He took up arms against Castro's military in the Escambray Mountains, he was captured in October 1960. He spent 28 years in Cuban prisons and was banished from the island upon his release in 1988. "From exile in Los Angeles he wrote about the 'naked brutality' and round-the-clock beating and harassment that he had endured: 'They made the men eat grass, they submerged them in sewage, they beat them hard with bayonets and they hit them with fence posts until their bones rattled.'
Total number of dead in this phase of the resistance remains unknown, but tens of thousands were jailed for decades. On January 28, 1976, within the Cuban prisons, dissidents and former members of the resistance came together to found the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. This initiative to document human rights abuses in Cuba, and report them to the international community marked the start of a non-violent resistance to the Castro dictatorship.
Many movements would emerge over the next 47 years. It would be impossible to list them all. However, it would be worthwhile to highlight some that still exist today on the island. The Christian Liberation Movement was founded in 1988, and in May 2002 with the Varela Project, a citizen initiative that thousands of Cubans signed, and led the Castro regime to change the constitution in an effort to block it, and brought international attention to Cuba's pro-democracy movement, and the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people.
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| Oswaldo Payá Antonio Diaz, and Regis Iglesias turn in petition |
In 1991 the Cuban Youth for Democracy Movement came into existence calling for free thought in Cuban education, and a return to university autonomy.
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| Cuban Youth for Democracy Movement |
In 1997 the Lawton Foundation was founded by Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and sought to educate Cubans on human rights and strategic non-violence, explicitly embracing the legacies of Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.
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| Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet |
In 2003 following a major crackdown on the opposition due to the Varela Project initiative and overall growth in the democratic resistance the Ladies in White came into existence and through non-violent actions challenged the Castro regime to free their loved ones and to change the totalitarian penal code that creates prisoners of conscience. In 2011 following his release from eight years in prison, Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia founded the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU).
In 2018, following the announcement that the Cuban dictatorship would further restrict artistic freedoms with Decree 349, a collective of artists formed the San Isidro Movement to campaign against the repressive law.
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| Logo of the San Isidro Movement |
What they all have in common is the decision to use nonviolent means and strategies to challenge the Castro dictatorship. However, they are not advocating collaboration or going into business with the oppressors.
Human action is a powerful force that must not to be underestimated, but to maximized it requires knowledge, strategic planning and courage. It also requires an understanding of the real nature of political power.
Professor Gene Sharp, a nonviolent theoretician who passed away on January 28, 2018, in his book, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential, recognized that political power is "the totality of influences and pressures available for use to implement, change, or oppose official policies for a society." This means that political power "may be wielded by the institutions of government, or in opposition to the government by dissident groups and organizations."
According to Gene Sharp the sources of political power include "authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, intangible factors, material resources, and sanctions."
If we look at Cuba, the communist dictatorship there uses propaganda claims, both internally and internationally, to assert that the regime has achieved successes in education and health care. These are pillars of legitimacy and authority for the Castro regime. The dictatorship has also trained
and staffed a massive intelligence apparatus to monitor and surveil the
populace in Cuba trained by the East German Stasi and the Soviet KGB
with 64 years of experience.
There is a large military that is heavily embedded in the Cuban economy, including tourism. In the area of skill and knowledge there is a dictatorship with 64 years of experience of imposing itself through violent means on the populace in Cuba, and overseas in places such as Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Venezuela. They have had experience in carrying out mass killings that rise to the level of genocide to assist client regimes. These first generation leaders are dying out, but many remain, including Raul Castro that have this knowledge and expertise in repression and terror.
One
must consider the best course of action with the greatest likelihood of
success while taking into account conditions on the ground.
Conservative activist Morton Blackwell explained a truth often
ignored by activists of all ideological stripes in a talk titled "The
Real Nature of Politics," which is required reading and offers three conclusions.
"1. Being right in the sense of being correct is not sufficient to win. You don't win just because your heart is pure, even if you can prove logically that you are right.
2. The winner in a political contest over time is determined by the number and the effectiveness of the activists and leaders on the respective sides.
3. The number and effectiveness of the activists and leaders on a given side in a political contest is determined by the political technology used by that side."
These conclusions work both in a political struggle within a democratic order, and in confronting a dictatorship that does not play by democratic rules.
These three ideas need to be present when planning resistance to the dictatorship in Cuba.
Providing more resources and legitimacy to the dictatorship and their networks of supporters, while marginalizing democratic forces is a recipe, already witnessed in Communist China for strengthening and modernizing the dictatorship in Beijing that turned into a greater threat to the rest of the world, and did nothing to advance democracy.
Considering that the Cuban opposition in the island over the past 47 years decided to resist the Castro dictatorship using nonviolent means, that the democratic resistance today as evidenced by the start of the July 11, 2021 uprising did so non-violently, and that concrete calls for help from the island are asking for nonviolent solidarity both inside and outside of Cuba now is the time to step up with the support requested, and not resort to the siren call of embracing the dictatorship providing it with more resources and legitimacy that has failed in the past against this regime.
Today, October 2nd is the international day of nonviolence and the 154th birth anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi. On this day let us remember our nonviolent icons in Cuba and share their message with the world, and continue to carry out concrete actions to restore democracy, the rule of law, and isolation and accountability for those engaged in human rights violations.
“If we must give our own lives in pursuit of the freedom of our Cuba, so be it.” - Laura Pollán
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