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. ***
Just a few weeks ago, Castro locked up 75 dissidents and executed three Afro-Cubans accused of hijacking. Yet, even after that crackdown, some lawmakers still call for an end to sanctions against his regime. They claim American goods and tourists will hasten a democratic transition.
That would be a first. Commerce and tourism with the Soviet Union, for example, didn't bring down the Berlin Wall or produce perestroika. Trade with Moscow did change perceptions about Americans in a part of the world unfamiliar with us. But the Soviet dictatorship collapsed when its economy ran out of gas.
Similarly, lifting the current embargo on Cuba would have no effect on Castro. Like other tyrants in history, he lives in a dream world that he forces others to inhabit and sustain. He will insulate it from all threats and do whatever it takes to keep it alive.
Those threats include a vocal dissident movement and a populace that seems more cynical about the old dictator every day. Holding them in check requires money to keep his repressive state running. Tourism and credit from a market the size of the United States could help supply the financing his government needs.
Historically, Castro has liberalized only when forced to do so. He didn't begin tolerating self-employment, for example, until Soviet subsidies to the island dried up in 1991. And he released dozens of political prisoners in 1998 only after Pope John Paul II made a plea before an international audience.
In contrast, commerce, joint ventures and aid money from Canada and other donors have produced no change in behavior. It's easy to see why. Entrepreneurs hoping to sell Cuba something don't want to question Castro's human rights record or the regime's business practices. Castro holds all the cards. Those who won't play his game lose their place at the table.
Canadian and European tourists haven't helped democracy flourish on the island. But they have fueled the growth of Cuba's joint-venture resort industry that supplies the state with hard currency. Like others before them, American visitors would be unlikely to go out of their way to criticize a state where there is no freedom of speech, nor to risk a jail term helping dissidents.
The only valid argument in favor of lifting restrictions is whether the U.S. government is justified in so limiting the freedom of American citizens to travel to another nation. There is a legal basis for establishing such limits in the interest of national security, but the government must continually make a case for keeping them. Right now, Cuba maintains a huge electronic espionage complex directed at U.S. shores, conducts research into biological warfare and sponsors international terrorist groups. So it would seem that current policy wins the national interest debate.***