OTTO J. REICH & ORLANDO GUTIERREZ
(as appeared on National Review Magazine)
In the 1980s, most American foreign-policy experts and intelligence analysts failed to see the internal changes taking place in the Soviet bloc as serious challenges to the regimes. Could history be repeating itself closer to home, this time in Cuba?
After 50 years of living under the most repressive dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere, the Cuban people are losing their fear and beginning to push off the Communist boot from their collective neck. Paradoxically, this is happening as a dark cloud of authoritarian populism spreads throughout Latin America, financed by Hugo Chávez’s petrodollars, undergirded by Castro’s intelligence and security infrastructure, and propelled by years of incompetence and selfishness on the part of political elites. Democratic change in Cuba, long deemed an impossibility, could turn the tide and usher forth a rebirth of freedom in the region.
An uncommon sound was heard throughout three Cuban cities in early May of this year: pots and pans being banged in protest over political and economic conditions on the island. The protest was as unusual as the way in which it was organized: An incipient movement of young bloggers used their limited access to the Internet — the Cuban government severely restricts access to computers and the Web — to call on the population to carry out the protest.
A few weeks earlier, on March 29, at the annual Havana Arts Festival, some of these same bloggers, together with young artists, had taken the stand during a presentation and proclaimed an “open podium” — calling on the hundreds of onlookers and participants to express themselves freely. Many did, openly and courageously mocking government censorship.
These reports are unusual because any anti-government protests in Cuba have traditionally been met with furious physical attacks by police and government-organized “rapid-response brigades” of local goons armed with iron bars and other blunt instruments. In these recent cases, however, the rapid-response brigades have not been effective: The citizens have responded with passive, but consistent, resistance.
At a government-sponsored concert a few weeks before the Havana Arts Festival, many youths had openly protested the arrest of Gorki Aguila, leader of a punk-rock band known for its obscene lyrics and no-holds-barred critique of the Castro regime. The Castros’ gerontocratic ruling clique is attempting to maintain total control over a nation whose population averages less than half its age.
In the town of Placetas, in the central part of Cuba, lives 44-year-old Jorge Luis García Pérez, also known as “Antúnez,” a black Cuban who served 17 years in prison for calling for glasnost and perestroika on the island. Antúnez has been called “the Black Diamond” by his fellow prisoners, for his tough resistance to the dictatorship and in reference to the color of his skin. He has organized meetings, marches, fasts, and vigils in a crusade to mobilize a nonviolent civic movement for change, and he recently went on a hunger strike to draw international attention to the plight of Cubans.
Antúnez has reasons to be hopeful. The Castro regime itself has recognized that it cannot extinguish what it calls “indisciplina laboral,” or rampant worker non-cooperation with the regime’s command-and-control apparatus. What’s more, after a grassroots campaign by activists throughout the island, more than 1.5 million Cubans of voting age refused to cooperate with the sham one-party, one-candidate “elections” organized by the government in January 2008 in order to “legitimize” the passing of presidential power from Fidel Castro to his younger (by almost five years) brother, Raúl. Never before had Cubans in such large numbers dared to defy the rigidly enforced order to vote. For the first time in half a century — because of this innovative campaign, carried out with fasts, public protests, workshops, Internet postings, leafleting, and programs on short-wave radio — citizens were galvanized into rejecting sham elections.
Since the March 18, 2003, crackdown that landed 75 civic activists and leaders in prison, the resistance movement has developed innovative ways of expanding the struggle for freedom, including the founding of groups such as the Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights, underground independent newsletters, and even citizen committees against police abuse. The movement grows, fueled by increasingly open popular discontent.
A number of U.S. congressmen and foreign governments are pressuring the Obama administration to accelerate U.S. diplomatic approaches to Cuba regardless of the action — or inaction — of the dictatorship. The result of following this misguided suggestion would be to undermine the growing dissident movement on the island and delay the day when democracy and freedom can return. The resilient civic resistance movement that has flowered in Cuba presents a constant challenge to a once all-powerful totalitarian regime. Unarmed but persistent, these nonviolent resisters represent a positive alternative future for Cuba.
Nor is frustration with the current government limited to the young and anonymous. In March, some of the most powerful people in the government — including Carlos Lage, a key economic official, and Felipe Pérez Roque, the foreign minister — were summarily removed from their posts. Their future is being debated at the highest levels, including within the Politburo, the Communist party’s policy-making body, from which they were also expelled. Their crime: having been secretly tape-recorded mocking Raúl and Fidel Castro’s incompetence (and, in the case of Fidel, incontinence), as well as the advanced age of the ruling clique. Furthermore, they could be heard hoping for the day when a younger generation could rule. The political significance of the demotion of formerly trusted, high-ranking leaders of the next generation of the island’s rulers must not be underestimated.
A dialogue with the Castro government that ignored the growing dissidence and despair at all levels of Cuba would be as counterproductive as would have been ignoring Lech Walesa in 1980s Poland and addressing only General Jaruzelski. The U.S. should instead draw attention to the courageous Cuban resistance and insist that nations that engage Castro not turn their backs on these freedom fighters. In this decade, too many European embassies in Havana (most of them from “Old Europe”) have, under pressure from the Castro regime, stopped even inviting dissidents to diplomatic functions. Fortunately, the Eastern European states have not followed suit, since they remember what it is like to live under a Communist dictatorship, and how important it is for dissidents to know they have friends on the outside.
It is said that “generals are always ready to fight the last war,” because they fail to recognize the changes that follow it. The same may be said about diplomats and politicians who are calling for commercial and diplomatic engagement with Castro’s Cuba. They are ready to talk to a government that does not represent the future of Cuba — or even its present.
But perhaps they cannot be blamed. After all, when was the last time that the U.S. or international mainstream media reported the events described above?
Mr. Reich served three U.S. presidents in the State Department and White House. He heads Otto Reich Associates, an international consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Mr. Gutierrez is national secretary of the Directorio Democratico Cubano, which supports efforts of the Cuban civil resistance.
click HERE for original story on NR's web site
No comments:
Post a Comment