Resisting tyranny and the liberator becoming a tyrant

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

My first encounter with Jorge Valls was in the 1987 documentary Nobody Listened. Janet Maslin of The New York Times in 1988 reviewed this film and highlighted the formerly imprisoned poet:

Jorge Valls, a writer, on the other hand, points out that at least ''free thinking dwelt behind prison walls; it was truly the free territory of Cuba.'' As for public free expression at the time of the revolution, Mr. Valls says: ''None of that in 1959! Just extraordinary exaltation, fanatical idolatry of the victorious warrior, and rampant folly that made everything acceptable.'' 

Jorge in this documentary on the human rights situation in Cuba in the first three decades of the Castro dictatorship gave a powerful testimony in defense of freedom of expression and human dignity that remains relevant today.

Nobody Listened was the work of two filmmakers with strong ties to Cuba. Jorge Ulla, who was born in Cuba and had also made Guaguasi in 1983 and following the above mentioned documentary made Navidades en familia in 1993.

Jorge Ulla (left) and Nestor Almendros (right)

Nestor Almendros was born in Barcelona, Spain on October 30, 1930 into what would become an anti-Franco family. 18 years later they moved to Cuba. During the years of his stay in the Cuban Republic and the 1952 coup by Batista Almendros travels to study film making in Rome and New York City.

When Fidel Castro takes power in 1959 promising the restoration of democracy, Nestor Almendros returns to Cuba. However when the revolutionary government censors two of his film shorts: Gente en la Playa and La Tumba Francesa, he goes into exile in Paris. While in France he begins to collaborate with filmmakers Erich Rohmer and Francois Truffaut.

In 1970 he does the cinematography for Truffaut's 1970 film, The Wild Child.  American filmmaker Terrence Malick impressed by his work on The Wild Child hires him as cinematographer in the 1978 film Days of Heaven Almendros continues his career in Hollywood as a cinematographer in important films such as: Kramer vs Kramer (1979), The Blue Lagoon (1980), and Sophie's Choice (1982). In 1979, Almendros won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Days of Heaven.

Towards the end of his life he directs two documentaries on human rights in Cuba. In 1984 he directs Improper Conduct that explores the discrimination and repression of homosexuals in Cuba under Castro. In 1987 he also directs Nobody Listened that interviews former comrades of Fidel Castro and other anti-Batista revolutionaries who were arrested, tortured and imprisoned after Castro took power in Cuba. 

Poet, former prisoner of conscience Jorge Valls

Former Cuban prisoner of conscience Jorge Valls presents a powerful testimony in Nobody Listened.  He also wrote an OpEd published in The New York Times on April 7, 2000 that remains important today for those resisting tyranny.

One day in 1952, there was a coup in my country against the legitimate government, and I thought -- and still believe -- that it was a real catastrophe for Cuba.

I went to fight against the Batista regime. That evening I was put in jail and badly beaten. After seven years of revolutionary struggle, in 1959, that spurious government was substituted amid a civil war by a new one, led by Fidel Castro, which from the very beginning didn't offer any guarantee that the fundamentals of law would be enforced.

Like Mr. Castro, I wanted a radical change in Cuban society, but I also knew that authority would never become legitimate unless the pure power of violence was submitted to reason, and strict respect for individual rights was guaranteed.

Without civil rights, the best intentions turn into a trap, and societies become prisons and asylums. There is a danger that we become as alienated and as fierce as the evil we think we are fighting.

That is what happened in Cuba under the Castro regime. In 1964, I was convicted of "conspiracy against the state," because I testified against the Castro government in a political trial, and I spent 20 years and 40 days in jail. I don't regret my time there, because I was defending this essential respectability of the human person.

 Below is the video Nobody Listened that is available on YouTube and in Amazon. It is highly recommended for those who want to know about the real Cuba.

Truth Squad: Setting the record straight on Che Guevara's December 11, 1964 speech at the UNGA

"I'd like to confess, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in a letter to his father after executing an unarmed man.  

Yesterday marked the 55th anniversary of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s 1964 address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. Telesur, today presented sanitized excerpts to promote their international agenda promoting socialism and communism.  Australian publisher Ocean Press also has a sanitized version of the speech translated to English that leaves out Guevara's reference to his adversaries as "worms" and that the firing squads were operating.

Guevara in his speech called out the Venezuelan government as murderers of students while failing to mention the pro-Castro elements in Caracas [in the autumn of 1960] that took the lives of 13 persons and injured 100 in an attempt to overthrow the social democracy led by Rómulo Betancourt.

 Nor did Guevara mention that Cuban Communist leader Blas Roca, told a Havana rally on January 23, 1963 that when the communists gained full control [in Venezuela] and “make themselves owners of the great riches in oil, aluminum and everything their earth imprisons, then all of America shall burn.”  A cache of three tons of weapons was found on a Venezuelan beach in November 1963 that was to be used to disrupt the democratic elections there.


On December 11, 1964, the Argentine guerilla gave an inflammatory speech at the United Nations General Assembly, attacking Western countries with a special focus on the United States and countries of Latin America. Several states took the floor to challenge him and exercise their right to reply.  Venezuela noted Che Guevara’s hypocrisy in slamming other countries given that “repressive measures, which include executions by a firing squad, that are continually carried out by the Cuban Government against its own people do not seem to wound his sensibility.” Guevara replied:

"The representative of Venezuela also used a moderate, though emphatic tone. He said that the accusations of genocide are vile and that it was really incredible that the Cuban Government care about these things in Venezuela with such repression against its own people. We must say here something that is a well-known truth and that we have always asserted before the whole world: executions? Yes, we have executed people; we are executing people and shall continue to execute people as long as it is necessary. We know what the result of a losing battle would be and the worms also have to know what the result of the lost battle is today in Cuba. In these conditions we live by the imposition of US imperialism."

Below we will highlight an excerpt from that speech and provide the historical context that raises some fundamental questions about this speech using language that dehumanizes the other (a first step on the road to genocide) and celebrates terrorists and assassins.

For example, Guevara highlighted the plight of Pedro Albizu Campos, a Puerto Rican Nationalist as an example of American cruelty. However, he did not provide the context and actions that led to his imprisonment. Below is a brief description of what led to his imprisonment.

Don Pedro Albizu Campos led a series of coordinated armed actions called the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts in the 1950s for the independence of Puerto Rico that were carried out in Puerto Rico and Washington DC. Between 1950 and 1954 they killed one soldier, seven policemen, and wounded six soldiers and twenty-three policemen. The terrorists saw 16 of their own killed and nine wounded in these actions.

Two of the most high-profile actions, were the attempted assassination of a sitting U.S. President and the wounding of five congressman shot during a floor debate in the U.S. Capitol.


On November 1, 1950 two Puerto Rican Nationalists from New York City stormed the Blair House in Washington DC in a failed effort to assassinate U.S. President Harry S. Truman.

On March 1, 1954 four Puerto Rican Nationalists fired shots from the visitors' gallery in the House of Representatives of the United States Capitol during a floor debate, wounding five Congressmen, one seriously.


Now that the context has been provided. Here is what Mr. Guevara stated about this individual at his UN address on December 11, 1964:

“We express our solidarity to the people of Puerto Rico and their great leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, who, in another act of hypocrisy, has been released at age 72, almost unable to speak, paralyzed after having spent a lifetime in jail. Albizu Campos is a symbol of America still unredeemed but untamed. Years and years of prison, almost unbearable pressures in jail, mental torture, loneliness, total isolation from his people and his family, the insolence of the conqueror and its lackeys in the land where he was born; nothing broke his will. The delegation of Cuba, in the name of its people, pays a tribute of admiration and gratitude to a patriot who dignifies our America.” 

The same degree of scrutiny should be observed when reviewing Che Guevara's other writings and speeches. The communist revolution in Cuba was built on carefully constructed lies. Guevara's objective was not to speak categorical truths, but to seize power. His political descendants today continue to have the same agenda: the violent overthrow of democracies and the imposition of totalitarian communist regimes.

Dissidents under house arrest on Human Rights Day, unqualified Cuban doctors performed surgery in Uruguay, and Bible readings threatened in Cuba

The system in Cuba continues to be a totalitarian dictatorship that trashes human rights.

 

Police and secret police block human rights defenders leaving their homes.

On December 10th, CubaBrief took a look back at the Cuba Republic's human rights legacy through the present. Today they take a look back at the events of International Human Rights Day. 

 

The secret police stopped human rights defenders, independent journalists and pro-democracy activists from leaving their homes on December 10th. Luz Escobar, a reporter for the alternative news website 14ymedio, on Twitter. “‘Go back up to your flat because today you cannot go out’ said a state security official guarding the entrance of my building.”

On December 8th 14ymedio reported that "the Cuban medical mission in Uruguay is at the center of an intense controversy over its professional abilities. Six of nine ophthalmologists on the Island who participated in the Miracle Mission failed to revalidate their titles in the South American country, according to an extensive report published this Sunday by the local newspaper El País." This is another example of why health care experts should be more skeptical about the claims made about Cuba's health care system. 

Religious repression continues to be an issue in Cuba with open expressions of religious belief being targets of repression with a report today by Evangelical Focus.

Reuters, December 10, 2019

Dissidents say Cuba put them under house arrest on Human Rights Day

Ladies in White continue to protest repression in Cuba.

HAVANA (Reuters) - Opposition activists and independent journalists in Communist-run Cuba said state security and police stopped them from leaving their homes on Tuesday to prevent them marking or reporting on international Human Rights Day.

Some activists had planned to observe the day by calling publicly for the liberation of one of the top opposition leaders in the one-party country, Jose Daniel Ferrer, whom Cuba calls a U.S.-financed counterrevolutionary.

Cuban authorities arrested Ferrer, 49, more than two months ago. While dissidents complain they are frequently subjected to short-term detentions to intimidate them, his is the first long-term arrest of a high profile government critic in years.

Human rights activists say it reflects a broader increase in repression as the country deals with an awakening of civil awareness thanks to expanded access to the internet and a hike in U.S. sanctions.
International rights organizations like Amnesty International, the Trump administration and the European Parliament have called for Ferrer’s release.

“‘Go back up to your flat because today you cannot go out’ said a state security official guarding the entrance of my building,” wrote Luz Escobar, a reporter for the alternative news website 14ymedio, on Twitter.

The Cuban government, which says its critics on human rights overlook Cuba’s guaranteed healthcare and education, did not reply to request for comment.

Cuba says the United States is using Ferrer - with its top diplomat in Havana even abetting his illegal activities - to undermine the government as part of its broader attempt to overthrow socialism in Latin America.

Activists from Ferrer’s Patriotic Union of Cuba called this week for his release and that of other UNPACU members in a campaign on social media.

“There is a continued vigilance as is usual on this day ... as part of a broader police operation to stop actions in favor of Ferrer,” said UNPACU spokesman Carlos Amel Oliva.

The Day of Human Rights coincides with the implementation on Tuesday of a new U.S. ban on all U.S. scheduled flights to Cuban destinations except Havana. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said on Twitter this would hurt Cuban families living on either side of the Florida Straits and violated their rights.

Reporting by Nelson Acosta; Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Dan Grebler

 

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-dissidents/dissidents-say-cuba-put-them-under-house-arrest-on-human-rights-day-idUSKBN1YE2G3

Not Qualified: 6 of 9 Cubans who participated in Miracle Mission failed to revalidate titles

14ymedio, December 8, 2019

Cuba’s Doctors of the Miracle Mission are Simple "Catarologists," Reveals Uruguay Newspaper

14ymedio, Havana, 8 December 2019 — The Cuban medical mission in Uruguay is at the center of an intense controversy over its professional abilities. Six of nine ophthalmologists on the Island who participated in the Miracle Mission failed to revalidate their titles in the South American country, according to an extensive report published this Sunday by the local newspaper El País.

The Uruguayan ophthalmology chair reproached a group of Cuban doctors who had previously performed operations at the Hospital de Ojos (Eye Hospital). “Despite the fact that the Uruguayan teachers concluded that they [the Cuban doctors] did not know enough, they had practiced for two years,” the article details.

Cuban doctors arrived in that country starting in 2007 with Operation Miracle, through which 90,000 Uruguayans were operated on for cataracts and other ophthalmological conditions. Before the arrival of that mission, patients had to pay between 1,500 and 2,000 dollars to undergo one of those procedures, but the agreement between Havana and Montevideo contributed to “democratize these surgeries,” the text details.

The Miracle Mission began in 2004, led by Cuba and Venezuela, at a time of close relationship between Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. The doctors working on this initiative have been deployed in 31 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

For years, Uruguay has been a posting very desired by Cuban doctors to serve on official mission, due to its social stability. The selection of professionals traveling to that country has been made within the Island and the brigades rotate every two years.

To practice in that country, Cuban professionals only have to revalidate their title as a general practitioner, a procedure that they perform in the Faculty of Medicine. “They just have to present the certificate and at no time do they take a test to confirm that they have the necessary knowledge.”

“It is an agreement in which so many doctors, so many nurses and so many opticians come. We did not know the training of the brigade, we never knew it. The only thing we knew was that surgeons came to operate on cataracts, but we did not know who was part of the team. We thought they knew what to do,” says an ex-director of the Eye Hospital who gave statements to El País.

In these 12 years, 60 Cuban doctors passed through the Eye Hospital, according to data published on the digital site of this health center. “The majority served for two years, but there were nine who defected from the Castro regime and wanted to stay,” the note adds. In their new situation “they had to revalidate their ophthalmologist degrees. Their general medicine license had already been validated upon arrival, but they had to prove that they had done the postgraduate course. Therefore, all these professionals went to the Graduate School of the Faculty of Medicine, which is responsible for authorizing the titles issued outside.”

However, six of the nine Cuban doctors did not pass the test, according to the records of the Graduate School accessed by El País. “All of them, although the ophthalmology chair considered that they do not know enough, had previously worked for two years at the Eye Hospital.”

In addition to those six doctors who could not validate their studies, three other Cuban professionals appeared in the last two years before the Graduate School. The ophthalmology chair has not yet ruled in these cases, so it is not possible to know if they passed the final test or not.

Every two years, and also before changes of the Government, a representative of the Cuban regime arrives at the Eye Hospital. That person is in charge of talking with the health center management and is the one who designates the doctors who will travel months later to Uruguay. “We only send them the best,” the representative is said to promise.

In the health center they explain that the training of Cuban doctors is different from that of Uruguayans. There are differences in the programs and the reason why they would have failed the tests given to them by the Chair of the Clinical Hospital. They say they learn “more specific knowledge and not as general” as local specialists.

That is why they usually call them, in a derogatory way, “catarologists.” The majority would have studied the procedure which they would later perform in their work, ignoring the rest of the knowledge related to ophthalmology.

The poor results on the tests have put the Uruguayan Association of Ophthalmology on alert. Andrea Merrone, its president, emphasizes that they do not oppose the arrival of foreign doctors to the country, although they would like to know if the professionals “have sufficient suitability” to practice.

Although criticisms about the level of the doctors of the Island had accumulated in Uruguay, the trigger for publication in the press has been the recent complaint made by the provisional Government of Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia. In that country, just 205 of the 702 Cuban doctors who were deployed had a degree. The remainder were technicians or drivers, doctors making up just a small number of the total.

http://translatingcuba.com/cubas-doctors-of-the-miracle-mission-are-simple-catarologists-reveals-uruguay-newspaper/

Evangelical Focus, December 11, 2019

 

Latin America

 

Traditional public Bible reading threatened in Cuba

Activists insult participants of the Bible reading in social media. “We live the greatest repressive wave against Christians since the sixties”, Christian Cuban journalist and professor says.

For more than 10 years, Cuban Christians gather gather for annual Bible reading at ‘Malecón’ the first Sunday of December. / GNA

The Evangelical League of Cuba (LEC in Spanish) organizes a public reading of the Bible, which takes place every year in the ‘Malecón’ in Havana, on the first Sunday of December. This year, pro-Communist regime activist Elaine Salaregui attacked this initiative on her Facebook account, saying that Christianity “express itself again in public space, this time giving visibility to the Bible they use as a club, showing up as a crowd, or even worse, as the Cuban Church”.

DIFFERENT TREATMENT

Salaregui leads the Church of the Metropolitan Community, with about 100 members and presence in several cities of the island. It receives support from the Cuban government, thanks to her proximity to Mariela Castro, the niece of the late dictator Fidel Castro. Also known as “the gay church”, the Metropolitan Community is not registered, however it has never received the hostile treatment other Christian communities suffer.

THREATS AND INSULTS

In addition to Salaregui's post, journalist Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, proposed “to go there that day to read the Constitution”, a provocation that several people seconded. Rodriguez was known months ago for comparing evangelical believers with staphylococci, in a Facebook post. “Read your Bible in its proper places and behave yourself. Don't cry in jail for breaking the law”, pro-Castro writer and poet, Jesús García, threatened the participants. Activist Roberto Ramos Mori, who has recently signed contracts with the government through the Ministry of Culture and the Havana Film Festival, and is known for using the hashtag #TheChurchWhichLightsUpMostIsTheChurchThatBurns, also supported Saralegui's post. Meanwhile, the audiovisual director for the Cuban state TV, Leandro de La Rosa, said: “On the Malecon? Oh, my mother, they will need a megaphone to read there. That amplified reading will be beautiful, will it be something like public Tantrism? What nonsense of idea”.

 

HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT

The Cuban government represses any concentration of people in public spaces, however this evangelical gathering has survived a decade, thanks to its discretion. After the attacks on the activity on the Malecon, the LEC eliminated the public invitation, to avoid further confrontation. “Although we have gathered more than 500 people with open Bibles in one of the most important avenues in the country, there has never been any disturbance”, said a participant from previous editions, who prefers to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation at work . However, “with the threats on Facebook, we fear that they will provoke us while we read, that they will bring the same hostile attitude they have in social media to an activity where the elderly and minors participate”, she added.

LACK OF INFORMATION AND DISCRIMINATION

“The biblical reading is not carried out out loud for the participants or the passers-by; it has never been done like that before”, stressed another regular participant of the reading. “People are very uninformed, and when they give their opinion at those virtual forums, they speak exclusively from prejudice”. “

THE WORST ANTI-CHRISTIAN WAVE SINCE THE SIXTIES”

Cuban journalist and professor, Leonides Pentón, said in an article for Latin American news website, Evangelico Digital, that “today in Cuba, we are starting to see the greatest repressive and discriminatory wave against the Christian community since the sixties, when the Communist Revolution began”. Last month, seven Cuban Christian intellectuals wrote a public letter to the government, calling them to “respect, guarantee and protect freedom of thought, conscience and expression, and recognize freedom of the press”. They also demanded “the lifting of those measures which violate individual liberties on all Cuban citizens, and the non-criminalization of journalism and social activism outside the aegis of the State”.

http://evangelicalfocus.com/world/4951/Traditional_public_Bible_reading_threatened_in_Cuba

 

Cuba's human rights legacy: Recovering a lost history

Human rights and democracy are intrinsic parts of Cuban heritage.

Seventy one years ago a democratic Cuba played key roles in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the establishment of the UN Human Rights Commission. Cuba's last democratic president, Carlos Prio Socarras, was elected by Cubans in free and fair elections on July 1, 1948 and assumed office on October 10, 1948. He was a democrat who respected civil liberties and presided over years of prosperity and freedom for Cubans.

President Prio belonged to the Autentico Party and was succeeding Ramon Grau San Martin, another member of the same political party, in the Cuban presidency who had completed his four year term. Both men respected human rights, and this was reflected by the actions taken by their diplomats at the founding of the United Nations.

Beginning in 1945 Cuba took part in lobbying for and participating in the drafting of the declaration and submitted nine proposals of which five made it into the final document. The first meetings of the General Assembly and the Security Council took place in London starting on January 10, 1946.

Diplomats Guy Pérez-Cisneros and Ernesto Dihigo

Cuban Ambassador Willy De Blanc in December of 1945 invited former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to lunch at the Cuban Embassy in London with other Cuban diplomats (including delegates to the U.N. Preparatory Commission Dr. Guy Pérez-Cisneros y Bonnel and Cuban jurist Dr. Ernesto Dihigo y López Trigo) where they requested his assistance in the creation of a human rights commission for the United Nations. Churchill recommended that the Cubans lobby Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, and they followed his advice. Eventually the former First Lady was selected as chairwoman to the Human Rights Commission.

Cuba, Panama, and Chile were the first three countries to submit full drafts of human rights charters to the Commission. The Cuban draft contained references to rights to education, food, and health care, and other social security. Latin American delegations, especially Mexico, Cuba, and Chile inserted language about the right to justice into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in what would become Article 8.  

Cuban delegate Guy Pérez-Cisneros in his speech on December 10, 1948 proposing to vote on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights before the third General Assembly of the United Nations in addition to highlighting the importance of the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and how it inspired the Third Committee’s work on this document also addressed the importance of the rule of law:

My delegation had the honor of inspiring the final text, which finds it essential that the rights of man be protected by the rule of law, so that man will not be compelled to exercise the extreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression.

The Cuban delegate also celebrated that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights condemned racism and sexism.

"My country and my people are highly satisfied to see that the odious racial discrimination and the unfair differences between men and women have been condemned forever."

This democratic Cuba was overthrown on March 10, 1952 by a military coup led by Fulgencio Batista and hopes of a democratic restoration were dashed by the rise to power of the Castro brothers on January 1, 1959 who established a six decade long dictatorship.

Guy Pérez-Cisneros died suddenly in 1953 trying to establish a Christian Democrat Party in Cuba in the early years of the Batista regime.

Ernesto Dihigo, like Pérez-Cisneros, left the diplomatic corps following the 1952 coup, but returned in 1959 as Cuba’s Ambassador to the United States in January of 1959 but retired in 1960. No longer a diplomat or a college professor, he dedicated the next forty years of his life to private study focused on philology. He left Cuba, with his wife Caridad Larrondo in 1989 and died in Miami in 1991. 

President Carlos Prio Socarras

Cuba's last democratic president, Carlos Prio Socarras, returned to Cuba in 1959 hoping there would be a democratic restoration. Two years later, in 1961, he was back in exile plotting the overthrow of the Castro regime. Regretting that he had supported Castro’s overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, and apparently suffering economic reversals he committed suicide on April 5, 1977.


This Cuban tradition of defending human rights and democracy did not end with the death of Carlos Prio, but it was now maintained in resistance to the Castro dictatorship. On January 28, 1976 Dr. Ricardo Bofill, a former philosophy tutor at the University of Havana, together with Martha Frayde at her home in Havana founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Prior to the Revolution Martha had been a licensed gynecologist who had studied abroad. She was active in the Orthodox Party and joined the underground resistance during the Batista dictatorship.

Human rights pioneer: Martha Frayde

During the early years of the Castro regime Martha Frayde was given a diplomatic posting. However, when she saw that the Castro regime was heading in a totalitarian direction, she resigned the post in 1965, and wanted to leave Cuba, but the dictatorship did not permit it. In 1976 she was accused of “counterrevolutionary conspiracy” and sentenced to 29 years in prison, but the international outrage following the military show trial led to her being exiled to Spain in 1979.

Over the next 34 years Matha Frayde represented the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in Spain. Ambassador Frayde never backed down from her non-violent resistance: "The Cubans inside are the ones who have to say and decide and are those who, in short, have to achieve change and count on Cubans from the exile for the reconstruction." 

Human rights pioneer Dr. Ricardo Bofill

Ricardo Bofill spent twelve years in a Cuban prison for his defense of human rights. Emerging from prison he continued his work in Cuba until 1988 when he left the island and continued the work of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in Miami. Dr. Bofill in the 1987 documentary "Nobody Listened" stated:

"I can't understand the hatred towards me. Because, really in the only field I’ve done battle, is the field of ideas. In this field I’ve had no response just prison and the police. And I don’t know why because the revolution controls all mass media. They have editorials, journalists, even many writers in the world. I don’t know why the response, time and again, has been jail. The response should come in the field I fight in, with ideas. I was arrested again in 1983. On that occasion, I was sentenced to 17 years in jail accused of activities in the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and the last period of prison began. For reasons of health and others I know not of in 1985 I was placed in the status I’m now in which is “conditional liberty with restriction of movement."

The mission of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights is for the Cuban government to comply with the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Cuba had signed in 1948.


This human rights tradition had a separate branch that emerged parallel to the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, but in the Cuban exile. 

Elena Mederos during Cuba's Republican era

Elena Inés Mederos y Cabañas de González, Minister of Social Work in Cuba over the first five months in 1959 of Castro's revolutionary government. Born in 1900, she had been a suffragette and a co-founder of the National Feminist Alliance in 1924. Realizing that the new regime was becoming a dictatorship she resigned. In 1961 she went into exile. She was a founding vice president of the Association of Cuban-American Women. Together with activist and political scientist Frank Calzón, Elena Mederos founded Of Human Rights in 1976 with the same objective as the Cuban Committee for Human Rights: to defend, by nonviolent and legal means, persecuted individuals, dissidents and political prisoners in Cuba. She passed away in 1981.

Elena Mederos exiled in the United States

Sadly, Dr. Ricardo Bofill passed away in Miami on July 12, 2019, but his legacy lives on in Cuba in the Cuban democratic resistance to the Castro regime today.  However, today on December 10, 2019 it is important to remember the Cuban Republic's high point in 1948 when they achieved the drafting and passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Requiem for Reinaldo Arenas: Died 29 years ago today

“The difference between the communist and capitalist systems is that, although both give you a kick in the ass, in the communist system you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you can scream.” - Reinaldo Arenas, 1980

On December 7, 1990 Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas killed himself in New York City, after battling AIDS for several years. He was an important critic of the Castro regime, and those intellectuals who supported it. As a Gay man he also suffered discrimination because of the communist dictatorship's hostility to homosexuals.



Reinaldo left behind an autobiography, Before Night Falls which proved a powerful denunciation of Fidel Castro’s regime. He also left behind a suicide letter:

"Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression that causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life ... I want to encourage the Cuban people abroad as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. ... Cuba will be free. I already am.

This autobiography was adapted into a film by Julian Schnabel in 2000 with Javier Bardem, Johnny Depp and Sean Penn with the same title.