Fuente del artículo: ANTONIO MARTINEZ / EFE
LA HABANA
Funcionarios cubanos comunicaron a representantes europeos que el gobierno de La Habana no acepta ayuda directa para los damnificados por los huracanes de la Comisión ni de 25 de los 27 países de la Unión, informaron ayer fuentes diplomáticas.
Cuba sólo ha aceptado asistencia directa de España y Bélgica, mientras que la Comisión y otros países de la Unión Europea (UE) que ofrecieron donaciones no han obtenido hasta ahora respuesta, por lo cual algunos planean enviarlas por medio de organismos de la ONU, la Cruz Roja y otros intermediarios, explicaron las fuentes.
Funcionarios del Ministerio cubano para la Inversión Extranjera y la Colaboración Económica dijeron a representantes europeos que este país mantiene su política de no aceptar ayuda directa de naciones que no han normalizado acuerdos de cooperación con el gobierno del general Raúl Castro.
"No es nada nuevo, pero sorprende que se mantenga en estas circunstancias'', con millones de damnificados por los huracanes y una crítica situación alimentaria, comentó un diplomático.
La isla no ha admitido cooperación de la UE desde el 2003, cuando ese bloque impuso al régimen cubano sanciones diplomáticas, técnicamente sólo "medidas'', a raíz de la condena de 75 disidentes a penas de cárcel hasta de 28 años.
Las medidas, que estaban suspendidas desde el 2005 y se limitaban a restringir las visitas oficiales a Cuba y a invitar a opositores a los cocteles de las embajadas europeas en La Habana, fueron levantadas totalmente en junio pasado.
El ministro cubano de Exteriores, Felipe Pérez Roque, declaró el jueves que su gobierno aceptó el diálogo políticoque ofreció la UE cuando levantó las sanciones, pero aclaró que está pendiente un "acuerdo formal'' sobre el marco, las modalidades y los principios en los que se basarán las conversaciones.
Agregó que las relaciones de su país con la UE han tenido "cierto avance'' hacia la normalización tras la eliminación definitiva de las medidas y dijo que Cuba está dispuesta a "considerar'' la recepción de la ayuda humanitaria que la UE pueda ofrecer tras el paso de los huracanes Ike y Gustav por la isla.
"En este momento no ha sido ofrecida aún esa ayuda a Cuba de otros gobiernos o de la Comisión. Si se produce, es un tema que habrá que considerar a la luz de la nueva situación'', explicó el canciller.
En cambio, diplomáticos europeos dijeron que varios países y la Comisión sí han ofrecido ayuda directa para los damnificados y no han obtenido hasta ahora respuesta oficial del gobierno cubano.
Funcionarios cubanos han sugerido extraoficialmente a esos donantes que podrían utilizar intermediarios como la Cruz Roja Internacional, la Iglesia Católica, organizaciones no gubernamentales y organismos de la ONU, pero nada se ha concretado hasta ahora, agregaron las fuentes.
Algunos diplomáticos expresaron esperanza de que el mejoramiento de las relaciones de Cuba con la UE permita superar pronto el veto a las donaciones directas.
De las excepciones, Bélgica se apartó de la política comunitaria y mantuvo la cooperación con Cuba cuando era ministro de Exteriores Louis Michel, ahora comisario europeo de Desarrollo y Ayuda Humanitaria, quien impulsó el fin de las sanciones y es calificado por diplomáticos de favorable al gobierno de la isla.
España, que lideró el levantamiento de las medidas, reanudó su cooperación con Cuba en el 2007 y ha enviado ya dos aviones con ayuda para las víctimas de los huracanes Ike y Gustav.
Los ciclones Gustas e Ike, que azotaron Cuba entre el 30 de agosto y el 9 de septiembre, causaron siete muertes y han dejado medio millón de viviendas destruidas o dañadas, cientos de miles de hectáreas de cultivo arrasadas, severos daños en infraestructuras y, en conjunto, pérdidas calculadas oficialmente en $5,000 millones.
El embajador de España en La Habana, Carlos Zaldívar, dijo días atrás que hasta ahora su gobierno ha acordado con las autoridades de la isla una ayuda de casi 800,000 euros ($1.1 millones), primera asistencia que Cuba acepta a su país en años.
El gobierno cubano también ha rechazado la ayuda humanitaria ofrecida por Estados Unidos con el argumento de que no puede aceptarla de un país que le bloquea.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
HERMANAS TIENDEN SU MANO A CUBA
La hermana Hilda Alonso, de las Hijas de la Caridad, recolecta los artículos que serán donados a las víctimas de los huracanes Ike y Gustav en Cuba.Tras la cinta amarilla que bloquea el paso en una calle lateral de un barrio residencial de Miami, docenas de voluntarios en tiendas blancas empacan cajas vacías de Corona con jugos, frijoles, arroz y medicinas. Sor Rafaela González, a sus enérgicos 75 años, dirige la acción mientras que los pitidos continuos de un montacargas abrumado de botellas de agua alerta a los voluntarios que se quiten de su camino.
"Este ha sido mi trabajo por 30 años'', dice ella con una sonrisa.
Su "trabajo'' en la orden católica de las Hijas de la Caridad de San Vicente de Paul es el de servir a los pobres tanto con buenas acciones como con palabras bondadosas. Alimentar al hambriento, dar de beber al sediente, vestir al desnudo, dar refugio al desamparado --palabras de misericordia católica que no conocen fronteras políticas, sólo el amor de Dios.
Mientras de Miami a Washington la gente debate si se debe o no aflojar las restricciones de viajes o el embargo comercial a Cuba tras dos huracanes seguidos, las monjas no tienen nada que debatir. Su trabajo principal es el de salvar tanto vidas como almas. Los políticos y los demagogos pueden señalar con el dedo y levantar sospechas sobre si los artículos donados están siendo interceptados por el gobierno cubano, pero las monjas tienen 14 años de experiencia en asegurarse que sus contenedores lleguen a las manos correctas.
Este no es tiempo de debate. Es tiempo de acción.
Y nuestra comunidad lo sabe.
Las Hijas de la Caridad han contado con un apoyo abrumador por parte de los residentes del sur de la Florida, ansiosos por ayudar al millón o más de cubanos que quedaron sin casa luego de que los huracanes Gustav y Ike devastaran la isla de una punta a la otra. Ellas también están ayudando a enviar provisiones a dos iglesias católicas locales --Notre Dame y St. James-- que están organizando envíos a Haití.
En sólo seis días, las hermanas han enviado cuatro contenedores de 40 pies con comida, agua y medicinas por un valor de $100,000 al Puerto de La Habana. Dos de esos contenedores ya están alimentando a gente en la atribulada provincia de Pinar del Río. El jueves, prepararon otros dos largos contenedores mientras docenas de voluntarios trabajaban sincronizadamente clasificando y empacando cajas y cargando los camiones.
Estudiantes de la escuela secundaria de Hialeah llegaron al mediodía con un camión de donaciones. El cartero trajo también un montón de donaciones que vienen hasta de California. El teléfono no paraba de sonar.
Todo comenzó con Sor Hilda Alonso, la monja de 87 años que dirige en Miami a las Hermanas de la Caridad. Ella era la directora del Colegio La Inmaculada, una escuela para niñas en La Habana antes de que la revolución de Fidel Castro cerrara las escuelas católicas y expulsara a sacerdotes y monjas. Luego de enseñar y dirigir escuelas en Puerto Rico, y de trabajar en Haití para fundar órdenes de San Vicente de Paul --‘‘la necesidad era muy grande''-- ella comenzó su misión en Miami.
Desde 1994, este pequeño grupo de seis monjas católicas han enviado contenedores llenos de donaciones en alimentos, medicinas y hasta equipos médicos para ayudar a las embarazadas, a niños con el Síndrome de Down, enfermos de lepra y a los ancianos en hogares de retiro en Cuba de los que se ocupa la iglesia.
Durante años, sus antiguas alumnas de la Inmaculada han pasado por el limpio y austero hogar de las monjas con cajas de donaciones, sabiendo que éstas llegarán a las personas necesitadas.
Sentada tras su escritorio de metal, junto a su cama personal con un cubrecama de algodón blanco en su pequeño dormitorio, Sor Hilda hizo notar que, para fines de esta semana, las monjas habrán enviado alrededor de seis contenedores --normalmente lo que hacen en un año.
"Ha sido una generosidad extraordinaria de los que viven aquí'', me dijo, añadiendo que personas de todas las razas estaban viniendo a traer donaciones.
No son solamente artículos, sino dinero lo que se necesita. Cuesta $5,000 enviar un contenedor a Cuba.
Yo había oído hablar por años de las buenas acciones de Sor Hilda, y este verano la visité con un amigo para averiguar más cosas sobre esta mujer menudita, oriunda de los campos tabacaleros de Pinar del Río, que ha asumido un trabajo tan gigantesco. A pesar de sus muchos años de trabajo duro, ella sigue siendo el "Conejito de Energizer'' --sólo que sin el tambor para llamar la atención sobre sí misma.
Como me dijo una voluntaria de la Inmaculada sobre la monja que ella conoció en Cuba: "Ella es la humildad personificada''.
Ahora las hermanas están trabajando prácticamente veinticuatro horas al día para llevar ayuda de emergencia a Cuba. Las monjas tienen un largo historial de llevar artículos aprobados por EEUU a la isla, sin que el gobierno cubano interfiera. Sor Hilda ha ido allí en persona para asegurar que los artículos sean entregados a las monjas, en el barrio habanero de La Víbora, quienes entonces distribuyen las donaciones.
Las monjas en Cuba van a los muelles, inspeccionan los contenedores y luego una monja los acompaña con un chofer de confianza para asegurarse de que la comida vaya a los necesitados y no acabe en el mercado negro.
"Estamos enviando a los lugares que han visto el peor destrozo'', dijo, y enumeró a Pinar del Río, Baracoa, Oriente y Camagüey.
La semana que viene, las monjas comenzarán a recoger sábanas y otros artículos de primera necesidad. Pero hoy, lo principal es la comida, el agua, las cosas esenciales.
Sobre todo, lo principal es el amor incondicional.
Las Hijas de la Caridad de San Vicente de Paul están aceptando comida, agua, medicinas y ropa de cama para las víctimas de los huracanes en Cuba en el 500 N.W. 63 Ave., Miami. O llame al 305-266-6485 para más información.
Fuente: El Nuevo Herald / C.M. Guerrero
COMMITTEE FOR THE PROTECTION OF JOURNALISTS: INTERNATIONAL PRESS FREEDOM AWARDS 2008
CPJ to honor five international journalistsTo Attend the Awards Dinner
Bilal Hussein
Danish Karokhel and Farida Nekzad
Andrew Mwenda
Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez
New York, September 16, 2008
The Committee to Protect Journalists will honor courageous journalists from Iraq, Afghanistan, Uganda, and Cuba with its 2008 International Press Freedom Awards at a ceremony in November.
Bilal Hussein of Iraq, Danish Karokhel and Farida Nekzad of Afghanistan, Andrew Mwenda of Uganda, and Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez of Cuba have all risked imprisonment, harassment, and, above all, their lives to report the news and stand up for press freedom in their countries.
“These are the front-line reporters who risk their lives and their liberty to bring the news not only to the people of their own countries but to a global audience,” said CPJ Board Chairman Paul Steiger. “Their courage and determination have expanded the world’s knowledge in critically important ways.”
“These are the front-line reporters who risk their lives and their liberty to bring the news not only to the people of their own countries but to a global audience,” said CPJ Board Chairman Paul Steiger. “Their courage and determination have expanded the world’s knowledge in critically important ways.”
“Our award winners embody what CPJ stands for—the right of journalists everywhere to report the news as they see it,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. “We honor them and stand behind them and their colleagues as they strive to keep all of us informed.”
Beatrice Mtetwa, a press and human rights lawyer in Zimbabwe, will receive CPJ’s Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in recognition of her continued efforts to ensure a free press in one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
The awards will be presented at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City on Tuesday, November 25. Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal, is chairman of the black-tie dinner. Gwen Ifill, CPJ board member and managing editor of PBS’ “Washington Week,” will be the host.
The Burton Benjamin Memorial Award is named in honor of the late CBS News senior producer and former CPJ chairman who died in 1988. Mtetwa, a 2005 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, is the first person to be honored with both awards.“Mtetwa’s courageous efforts on behalf of journalists in Zimbabwe demonstrate her unflinching commitment,” CPJ’s Steiger said. “She is richly deserving of the Burton Benjamin Award, given for lifetime achievement in the cause of press freedom.” The International Press Freedom Awards, now in their 18th year, are the centerpiece in CPJ’s annual fund-raising effort, providing more than a third of the budget for our press freedom advocacy efforts around the world. To attend the awards dinner, see our online reply form.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW WITH ARMANDO VALLADARES: TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN CASTRO'S GULAG
By Mary Anastasia O'Grady
16 August 2008
The Wall Street Journal
www.wsj.com/opinion
Miami -- In late December 1959, nearly a year after Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had been run out the country by a movement that had a goal of restoring the 1940 Cuban constitution, Fidel Castro was tightening his grip.
At the time, Armando Valladares was a 22-year-old government bureaucrat at the Post Office Savings Bank. One day a group from the Communist Party showed up in his office and put a sign on his desk that read "If Fidel is a communist, put me on the list. He's got the right idea."
Castro had not yet made public his communist intentions. But Mr. Valladares says that "the sign was part of the campaign by the party and by Fidel to prepare the population for communism, which most knew little about. The idea was that since Fidel had already made his name synonymous with the Cuban messiah, he must be right about communism."
Mr. Valladares told his visitors that he didn't want that sign on his desk. "Five or six days later, in the wee hours of the morning, they came to my house. My mother's room was closest to the front door so she heard the knock and got up to see who was there. When she opened the door, the men pushed her out of the way and rushed into the house. I awoke with a machine gun against my temple."
The young Valladares had a lot of company. Thousands were being rounded up. Some waited months for their trials. Many others were immediately marched before firing squads.
Mr. Valladares got his day in court within the week. The judge, he says, sat with his feet up on the desk reading a comic book and making jokes. The search of his home had produced "no evidence, no weapons, no propaganda opposing the state." Nevertheless he was convicted as a potential conspirator against the Revolution and sentenced to 30 years. His cell mates applauded the decision, because the only other possible sentence was the death penalty.
Cuban state security applied every torture method in the totalitarian handbook -- and even some new inspirations -- to break the prisoners. Many cracked and many committed suicide, but Mr. Valladares, along with a minority of others, would not bow to the "Revolution." He says that three things preserved him during his 22 years in prison. First, he was totally sure of his ideals. Second was the love of Martha -- who would become his wife -- and the fact that she believed in him. Third were his religious convictions. He was finally released from prison in 1982 and forced into exile.
Castro's resignation as "president" of Cuba this February has touched off a landslide of speculation about whether his brother Raul, the new official head of state, might soon begin a transition away from political and economic repression. But the 71-year-old Mr. Valladares, who has become an accomplished poet and artist, human-rights activist and diplomat -- he served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva -- says forget it.
I recently had dinner with him and Martha at their home in Miami, and used the opportunity to pepper him with questions about the political landscape in Cuba today. Topping my list was whether we are already seeing the nascent stages of reform on the island.
His answer is an unequivocal no: "Until Fidel Castro dies, there will be no changes in Cuba. Fidel will not permit it. The terror imposed since 1959 continues today and Raul will not dare make a single change as long as his older brother is alive."
And what about Fidel's health? "He can still terrorize because he has lucid moments," Mr. Valladares says. "But those moments are unpredictable, which is why he cannot be seen in public or on live television, even for a minute." In the meantime, the repression has increased in recent months, he tells me, as those who have participated in his crimes seek to preserve the status quo.
The Castro government has been a killing machine since it took over in 1959. If a truth and reconciliation commission is ever called on to establish accountability, Fidel, Raul and many of their henchmen whose "hands are stained with blood," according to Mr. Valladares, would not fare well.
It is no coincidence that the three beliefs which helped Mr. Valladares survive prison were also key tenets that the communists were determined to destroy: liberal ideals, the family and God. For their refusal to accept indoctrination -- even in the face of constant beatings and forced labor, solitary confinement in tiny, windowless cells for weeks at a time, and near starvation -- Mr. Valladares and his group became known as the "plantados," which roughly translates as "the unwavering ones."
The regime went to such extremes that I wonder if it lost its zeal to torture after a time. Mr. Valladares corrects me. He says that the conditions only grew "more repressive. As my group [the plantados] refused to accept 'rehabilitation,' everyday they tried to come up with new ways to torture us."
In 22 years he only had 12 visits. The strength of the plantados impressed even his captors and in the late 1970s, he says, the official publication from the interior ministry wrote about them, marveling that "all repressive methods and tactics have failed to force a certain group of counterrevolutionary prisoners into accepting political rehabilitation."
Mr. Valladares and three other prisoners -- including Pedro Luis Boitel, who would later die on a hunger strike in 1972 when Castro gave an order to refuse him water -- even escaped once from the maximum security prison on Cuba's Isle of Pines. Using materials smuggled in from visitors, they dyed their clothes the color of military uniforms and filed through the prison bars. The disguises worked so well that "we waved to the guards as we walked out," Mr. Valladares says, chuckling.
But the boat that was supposed to pick them up never arrived; and eventually the prison guards hunted them down in the island swamps. What happened? Mr. Valladares says he can only speculate, but that everyone knew the reputation of the prison and believed that escape was impossible. "They must have thought the plan and the planners were simply crazy so they never even bothered to come for us."
That event would foreshadow the wider experience of the Cuban people over the next 50 years -- abandonment by the outside world. Mr. Valladares explains it this way: "We felt that the world had turned its back on the prisoners of conscience in Cuba." In truth, it had.
When Mrs. Valladares was allowed to leave Cuba in 1972 with her father -- who had also been a political prisoner -- and began an international effort to bring attention to the Cuban prisoners, the brutality of the regime was already well established. But as she found out, the facts weren't much help. "It was very difficult," she tells me, slowly and deliberately with more than a touch of sadness.
As an example, she describes her encounter with Sean MacBride, who was the former Amnesty International Chairman, at a human-rights conference in Venezuela in 1977. "He was very nice to me at first because he didn't realize who I was. But when I tried to speak about the Cuban prisoners of conscience, he began banging on the microphone and screaming, 'Don't translate that! Don't translate that!' The journalists covering the event asked me, 'Why is this man telling you to shut up?'"
The next day in the Venezuelan press there was a story titled "Human rights violated in a human-rights conference." That same year MacBride was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize given by the Soviet Union.
Mr. Valladares says that as amazing as it sounds, it took Amnesty International until 1978 to "discover" that there were political prisoners in Cuba. "Eighteen years after I was jailed! There were already thousands murdered, tortured, Boitel had already died."
Still AI has been downright progressive compared to some European governments. Mr. Valladares says that in 1988 the Spanish government of Felipe Gonzalez was especially disingenuous, when its foreign minister told Mr. Valladares that Spain had no evidence of human-rights violations in Cuba. Only weeks later, he says, the Spanish embassy in Havana produced a report documenting the atrocities of the Cuban regime, but opted to bury it so as to give cover to Fidel.
When the report was leaked to the press, Mr. Valladares says he brought dozens of the Spanish newspapers to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva and distributed them. "I told the Spanish ambassador, 'Congratulations, your report is very good. It is as good as the CIA report.'"
Mr. Valladares was giving the Spaniard a dig, but not without provocation. Both he and Mrs. Valladares say that over the years European government officials (Spain and Sweden to name but two) repeatedly acknowledged privately the regime's unacceptable brutality. But the same officials also said that to come out against it publicly would be to admit that the U.S. was right about Castro. And nobody wanted to do that.
"Castro is still there because the world envies the U.S., and all that hatred for the U.S. has gone to support Fidel Castro," Mr. Valladares says. As a result, the Cuban people have been left to fend for themselves against the jackboots and East German spy techniques of Cuban state security. Thousands have died trying to flee.
Martha Valladares says that in the past 50 years she thinks international support for Cuban liberty has improved "a little." She believes the foreign press in Cuba -- despite the fact that it is not free and is manipulated -- has helped. "The Women in White" [a group of prisoners' wives, mothers and sisters who have organized to bring attention to their loved ones] could not have existed before. We tried to do that when Armando's group was on a hunger strike and they took us to jail."
Mr. Valladares says that once Fidel dies, the regime will not be able to keep his death a secret for very long, and the odds for change will go way up. "The old guard will try to maintain the status quo, but there are many young officers who do not have blood on their hands and who won't want to fight for a system that has failed and is dying." Under those circumstances, he contends, there could be a struggle inside the military.
Add to this the fact that Raul is not respected -- and that "the youth are losing their fear and criticizing the government openly" -- and you can see the possibilities for change. "The capacity to terrorize has a limit," he says, "and the country is reaching it." If anyone knows about that limit, it's Mr. Valladares.
---------------------------------------
Ms. O'Grady writes the Americas column for The Wall Street Journal.
Copyright (c) 2008, Dow Jones & Company, Inc
16 August 2008
The Wall Street Journal
www.wsj.com/opinion
Miami -- In late December 1959, nearly a year after Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had been run out the country by a movement that had a goal of restoring the 1940 Cuban constitution, Fidel Castro was tightening his grip.
At the time, Armando Valladares was a 22-year-old government bureaucrat at the Post Office Savings Bank. One day a group from the Communist Party showed up in his office and put a sign on his desk that read "If Fidel is a communist, put me on the list. He's got the right idea."
Castro had not yet made public his communist intentions. But Mr. Valladares says that "the sign was part of the campaign by the party and by Fidel to prepare the population for communism, which most knew little about. The idea was that since Fidel had already made his name synonymous with the Cuban messiah, he must be right about communism."
Mr. Valladares told his visitors that he didn't want that sign on his desk. "Five or six days later, in the wee hours of the morning, they came to my house. My mother's room was closest to the front door so she heard the knock and got up to see who was there. When she opened the door, the men pushed her out of the way and rushed into the house. I awoke with a machine gun against my temple."
The young Valladares had a lot of company. Thousands were being rounded up. Some waited months for their trials. Many others were immediately marched before firing squads.
Mr. Valladares got his day in court within the week. The judge, he says, sat with his feet up on the desk reading a comic book and making jokes. The search of his home had produced "no evidence, no weapons, no propaganda opposing the state." Nevertheless he was convicted as a potential conspirator against the Revolution and sentenced to 30 years. His cell mates applauded the decision, because the only other possible sentence was the death penalty.
Cuban state security applied every torture method in the totalitarian handbook -- and even some new inspirations -- to break the prisoners. Many cracked and many committed suicide, but Mr. Valladares, along with a minority of others, would not bow to the "Revolution." He says that three things preserved him during his 22 years in prison. First, he was totally sure of his ideals. Second was the love of Martha -- who would become his wife -- and the fact that she believed in him. Third were his religious convictions. He was finally released from prison in 1982 and forced into exile.
Castro's resignation as "president" of Cuba this February has touched off a landslide of speculation about whether his brother Raul, the new official head of state, might soon begin a transition away from political and economic repression. But the 71-year-old Mr. Valladares, who has become an accomplished poet and artist, human-rights activist and diplomat -- he served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva -- says forget it.
I recently had dinner with him and Martha at their home in Miami, and used the opportunity to pepper him with questions about the political landscape in Cuba today. Topping my list was whether we are already seeing the nascent stages of reform on the island.
His answer is an unequivocal no: "Until Fidel Castro dies, there will be no changes in Cuba. Fidel will not permit it. The terror imposed since 1959 continues today and Raul will not dare make a single change as long as his older brother is alive."
And what about Fidel's health? "He can still terrorize because he has lucid moments," Mr. Valladares says. "But those moments are unpredictable, which is why he cannot be seen in public or on live television, even for a minute." In the meantime, the repression has increased in recent months, he tells me, as those who have participated in his crimes seek to preserve the status quo.
The Castro government has been a killing machine since it took over in 1959. If a truth and reconciliation commission is ever called on to establish accountability, Fidel, Raul and many of their henchmen whose "hands are stained with blood," according to Mr. Valladares, would not fare well.
It is no coincidence that the three beliefs which helped Mr. Valladares survive prison were also key tenets that the communists were determined to destroy: liberal ideals, the family and God. For their refusal to accept indoctrination -- even in the face of constant beatings and forced labor, solitary confinement in tiny, windowless cells for weeks at a time, and near starvation -- Mr. Valladares and his group became known as the "plantados," which roughly translates as "the unwavering ones."
The regime went to such extremes that I wonder if it lost its zeal to torture after a time. Mr. Valladares corrects me. He says that the conditions only grew "more repressive. As my group [the plantados] refused to accept 'rehabilitation,' everyday they tried to come up with new ways to torture us."
In 22 years he only had 12 visits. The strength of the plantados impressed even his captors and in the late 1970s, he says, the official publication from the interior ministry wrote about them, marveling that "all repressive methods and tactics have failed to force a certain group of counterrevolutionary prisoners into accepting political rehabilitation."
Mr. Valladares and three other prisoners -- including Pedro Luis Boitel, who would later die on a hunger strike in 1972 when Castro gave an order to refuse him water -- even escaped once from the maximum security prison on Cuba's Isle of Pines. Using materials smuggled in from visitors, they dyed their clothes the color of military uniforms and filed through the prison bars. The disguises worked so well that "we waved to the guards as we walked out," Mr. Valladares says, chuckling.
But the boat that was supposed to pick them up never arrived; and eventually the prison guards hunted them down in the island swamps. What happened? Mr. Valladares says he can only speculate, but that everyone knew the reputation of the prison and believed that escape was impossible. "They must have thought the plan and the planners were simply crazy so they never even bothered to come for us."
That event would foreshadow the wider experience of the Cuban people over the next 50 years -- abandonment by the outside world. Mr. Valladares explains it this way: "We felt that the world had turned its back on the prisoners of conscience in Cuba." In truth, it had.
When Mrs. Valladares was allowed to leave Cuba in 1972 with her father -- who had also been a political prisoner -- and began an international effort to bring attention to the Cuban prisoners, the brutality of the regime was already well established. But as she found out, the facts weren't much help. "It was very difficult," she tells me, slowly and deliberately with more than a touch of sadness.
As an example, she describes her encounter with Sean MacBride, who was the former Amnesty International Chairman, at a human-rights conference in Venezuela in 1977. "He was very nice to me at first because he didn't realize who I was. But when I tried to speak about the Cuban prisoners of conscience, he began banging on the microphone and screaming, 'Don't translate that! Don't translate that!' The journalists covering the event asked me, 'Why is this man telling you to shut up?'"
The next day in the Venezuelan press there was a story titled "Human rights violated in a human-rights conference." That same year MacBride was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize given by the Soviet Union.
Mr. Valladares says that as amazing as it sounds, it took Amnesty International until 1978 to "discover" that there were political prisoners in Cuba. "Eighteen years after I was jailed! There were already thousands murdered, tortured, Boitel had already died."
Still AI has been downright progressive compared to some European governments. Mr. Valladares says that in 1988 the Spanish government of Felipe Gonzalez was especially disingenuous, when its foreign minister told Mr. Valladares that Spain had no evidence of human-rights violations in Cuba. Only weeks later, he says, the Spanish embassy in Havana produced a report documenting the atrocities of the Cuban regime, but opted to bury it so as to give cover to Fidel.
When the report was leaked to the press, Mr. Valladares says he brought dozens of the Spanish newspapers to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva and distributed them. "I told the Spanish ambassador, 'Congratulations, your report is very good. It is as good as the CIA report.'"
Mr. Valladares was giving the Spaniard a dig, but not without provocation. Both he and Mrs. Valladares say that over the years European government officials (Spain and Sweden to name but two) repeatedly acknowledged privately the regime's unacceptable brutality. But the same officials also said that to come out against it publicly would be to admit that the U.S. was right about Castro. And nobody wanted to do that.
"Castro is still there because the world envies the U.S., and all that hatred for the U.S. has gone to support Fidel Castro," Mr. Valladares says. As a result, the Cuban people have been left to fend for themselves against the jackboots and East German spy techniques of Cuban state security. Thousands have died trying to flee.
Martha Valladares says that in the past 50 years she thinks international support for Cuban liberty has improved "a little." She believes the foreign press in Cuba -- despite the fact that it is not free and is manipulated -- has helped. "The Women in White" [a group of prisoners' wives, mothers and sisters who have organized to bring attention to their loved ones] could not have existed before. We tried to do that when Armando's group was on a hunger strike and they took us to jail."
Mr. Valladares says that once Fidel dies, the regime will not be able to keep his death a secret for very long, and the odds for change will go way up. "The old guard will try to maintain the status quo, but there are many young officers who do not have blood on their hands and who won't want to fight for a system that has failed and is dying." Under those circumstances, he contends, there could be a struggle inside the military.
Add to this the fact that Raul is not respected -- and that "the youth are losing their fear and criticizing the government openly" -- and you can see the possibilities for change. "The capacity to terrorize has a limit," he says, "and the country is reaching it." If anyone knows about that limit, it's Mr. Valladares.
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Ms. O'Grady writes the Americas column for The Wall Street Journal.
Copyright (c) 2008, Dow Jones & Company, Inc
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