Cuba's Varela Project

Yesterday's (May 13) Wall Street Journal (no link) has a lengthy, front page article on the Varela Project, a petition campaign seeking a referendum on political reform in Fidel Castro's island prison, and its creator Oswaldo Payá. The project, named after a 19th Century Catholic priest and independence advocate Felix Varela, seeks to take advantage of Article 88 of Cuba's constitution which permits any citizen who collects 10,000 signatures to petition the National Assembly for a referendum on any subject.

Payá and his volunteers have gathered more than 20,000 signatures and submitted a pared-down list of 11,020 to the National Assembly last Friday. The petition calls for a national referendum to allow free speech and free elections, amnesty for political prisoners, and the right to own and operate private businesses. Unlike much Cuban dissident activity, the Varela project has been designed in a way that the government finds difficult to counter or dismiss.

By calling for a plebiscite guaranteed by the 1976 constitution, the Varela Project is legal, moderate and thus almost impossible to disqualify," says Sebastian Arcos of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, another local dissident group. The regime, he adds, is in "the uncomfortable dilemma of accepting the plebiscite or admitting it ignores its own laws."

As a result, the Journal Cuban officials apparently have not decided how to handle the petition.

Some want to simply ignore Varela; others say the growing international prominence of Mr. Payá won't allow such an easy solution.

The paper suggests that part of the official paralysis may also be due to Cuba's growing isolation, noting recent spats with Mexico and Uruguay over Cuba's human rights record. At the same time, Cuba's economic situation is deteriorating again.

"People are at the end of their rope," says Varela volunteer Regis Iglesias, 32. "But all Castro talks about are the glories of the revolution."

In fact, the government's uncertain response to Varela reflects the country's uncertainty as the Castro regime seems to be drawing to a close. The Cuban dictator is about 75 years old and is rumored not to be in the best health. Although the New Class nomenclatura plans to retain control under Castro's brother and heir apparent Raul Castro, visitors to the island sense widespread feeling of patient expectation, waiting for Castro's death, anticipating regime change soon after. If so, Oswaldo Payá, age 50, may become a very important figure indeed:

"I think Castro doesn't crush Varela because he doesn't see clearly the threat it poses," says Cuban writer Carlos Alberto Montaner, who lives in exile in Madrid. "Meantime, Payá is becoming a sort of Vaclev Havel, a well-khown man of uncompromising moral fiber whom the outside world is watching carefully."

Thank you MarkWar. I'll post the full text below.

Support the Varela Project

It was March 1990. In a house in Havana's outskirts, six dissidents found their conversation interrupted by the roar of a helicopter overhead. Minutes later, a mob of ``outraged citizens'' raided the home, knocking down the door and smashing several windows. That's how the Cuban regime crushed the first serious attempt at unification by dissident groups, which then numbered barely half a dozen.

The second attempt, in the early 1990s, was less ephemeral but also failed as a result of intrigue and suspicion planted within and from without. Instead of unifying, it divided the opposition into two ineffectual blocs.

The third attempt -- Concilio Cubano, in 1995 -- was much more serious, and the regime's reaction was so brutal that it left four Cubans dead in the Straits of Florida.

The fourth and latest attempt has just been made, with the endorsement of the Varela Project by more than 100 opposition groups.

The importance of an opposition-group convergence in Cuba is easy to gauge by looking at the regime's reaction. An coalition would attract international attention and gain legitimacy more effectively than a hundred small groups.

It's not the international stage that worries the regime most, however, but the domestic scene. An opposition coalition undoubtedly would be more attractive to the Cuban people, who might begin to consider it as a serious alternative to the present regime. That is why the Cuban regime, which has failed to eliminate the opposition, cannot afford the luxury of allowing it to organize and mature.

Mature is the key word. No political opposition has a chance to succeed if it doesn't come together behind a common strategy, beyond agreement on the final objective. Democracy is the game of consensus from diverse opinions. Consensus is a sign of political maturity, and only the politically mature societies are capable of prospering in freedom.

We Cubans cannot successfully leap from totalitarianism to democracy without first learning the art of consensus and political coalitions. The Varela Project gives us the perfect opportunity to exercise those virtues.

The project is also politically astute. By calling for a plebiscite guaranteed by the 1976 Constitution, the Varela Project is legal, moderate and thus almost impossible to disqualify. No one could oppose the idea of submitting the Cuban regime to the people's will through a plebiscite.

For the opposition, the Varela Project is an ally generator and foe neutralizer, even within the regime itself. For the regime, it's the uncomfortable dilemma of accepting the plebiscite, or admitting that it ignores its own laws.

Some have criticized the Varela Project as a ``Marxist project'' that legitimizes the Constitution of 1976 and, by inference, the regime. The same could be said about the Chilean case, but there you have the opposition in power and Augusto Pinochet stripped of immunity. No project that promotes individual freedoms can be Marxist, and the promoter of the Varela Project, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, is a legitimate and honorable oppositionist who is no more a Marxist than I'm a Martian.

No project that promotes individual freedoms can be Marxist. The Varela Project does not claim to be the perfect solution to the Cuban crisis. It is not a transition project, either, but first step in that direction, an experiment whose consequences are negative only to the regime. That's why it deserves everyone's support, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, regardless of what our favorite strategy might be.

In the end, politics is the art of the possible, not of our dreams. [End]

Sebastián Arcos Cazabón is an activist with the Cuban Committee for Human Rights.

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