Address moved outdoors Thousands of Argentines crowd Buenos Aires boulevard to hear Cuba's Fidel Castro speak***BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - To the cheers of thousands of screaming Argentines, Cuban leader Fidel Castro criticized U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and Latin America in a speech Monday. Castro, who attended Sunday's inauguration of President Nestor Kirchner, was on his first trip to this economically troubled South American country since 1995. Dressed in a dark blue suit and tie, Castro drew shouts of "Ole! Ole! Ole!" and "Fidel! Fidel!" as he spoke for more than two and a half hours outdoors on a crisp winter night.
Castro began by paying homage to Argentina-born revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who served as one of his top advisers during the 1959 revolution. "He was a wonderful human being, extremely intelligent and cultured, and who had an enormous sense of solidarity," he said. Castro then compared his country's achievements in health care and education to levels attained by the United States in the same field. But his criticism of the U.S-led war in Iraq drew the loudest applause. "We send our doctors, not bombs, to the farthest corners of the world to help save lives, not kill them," he said to a roar of cheers. ***
"The people of Buenos Aires are sending a message to those in the world who want to ride roughshod over our cities and our countries in Latin America," he added in a thinly veiled reference to the United States. The speech was organized by a student group and originally planned to be held in an auditorium at the University of Buenos Aires Law School, but was moved outdoors after thousands swarmed the building to hear Castro speak.***
______________________________
And Saddam and Castro imprison, torture and execute at home. Well, Saddam used to.
Castro's injustice system convicted them of violating Cuba's independence, which is the very thing they yearn for-"independence from oppression," as Cuban founding father José Martí wrote. Perversion of language is to totalitarianism what theft is to kleptomania.
These heroes' real crime was heresy; they defied Castro's archaic absolutism and called for openness and progress. They called for a Cuba where people aren't imprisoned for speaking their minds and are citizens instead of slaves.
Cuba's most famous heretic is currently Oswaldo Payá. He was born in 1952 and endured forced labor camps from 1969 to 1972 for opposing the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. (Castro endorsed the invasion.)
Payá leads the Christian Liberation Movement and the Varela Project, the latter a petition drive that seeks a referendum on human rights, electoral reform, and other issues. The Project bases the referendum on a provision of Cuba's 1976 "constitution," a document that among other things prohibits private media and activities "against the existence and ends of the socialist State."
Payá's international prominence shielded him from April's autos-da-fé, but lesser known supporters of the Project suffer greatly. College students Roger Rubio Lima, Harold Cepero Escalante, and Joan Columbié Rodríguez were expelled last fall for signing the Project; Project activists Jesús Mustafá Felipe and Robert Montero were sentenced to 18 months in February; and Project organizer Hector Palacios was sentenced to 25 years in April.
These are six names, and there are so many more.
While Cuban human rights organizations share a common purpose in emancipating Cuba from totalitarianism, they differ on methods. Dr. Biscet, for example, leads the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights and doesn't support the Varela Project.
"When I was presented with the Project in 1997, I told them that everything that unites the people is good, but that I personally dissented, because I would never honor that [1976] constitution," he said last November. "I will only honor a constitution when a democratic constitution is established that respects the rights of the people of my country." (There's also the contradiction of a referendum on human rights, rights by definition not being subject to a referendum.)
Payá considers economic sanctions diversionary from Cuba's internal crisis, describing them as "not a factor in change in Cuba." Dr. Biscet supports sanctions, however, and made the following analogy in November:
My stand is pragmatic: if you have an individual that abuses his family at home, the right thing to do is to remove the individual from the home, not to give him more money to continue abusing. If the international community had acted with Cuba in the same form that it did with [the apartheid regime] of South Africa, our country would have been free a long time ago.
This tactical diversity is appropriate. Unlike a despot's lackeys, free thinkers aren't expected to be identical. ***