Many of the dissidents are serving terms of up to 28 years. The women stopped the Fifth Avenue marches in May after state authorities threatened to throw them all in prison, they said. That capitulation reduced, but didn't stop, the alleged threats. ''The authorities came seven or eight times to visit me and told me to stop attending the church or they'd make me disappear,'' said Dolia Leal, 58. Her husband, Nelson Aguiar Ramirez, who heads the illegal Cuban Orthodox Party, was imprisoned in March.
In addition, Leal said, when she tried to visit her husband last month to give him medicine and vitamins, prison officials ''told me they wouldn't give them to him as long as I went to the Church of St. Rita.'' Yolanda Huerga -- whose husband, writer and journalist Manuel Vazquez, also was arrested in March -- said security agents told her if she didn't stop attending the Mass they'd take away her 9-year-old son, Gabriel, who is recovering from spinal surgery, and make him a ward of the state. ''They also visited Gabriel's school to ask if he was doing anything bad'' and stood nearby during her son's surgery in July, ''just so we'd always know they're watching us,'' Huerga said.
Asked about the alleged threats, Luis Fernandez, a Cuban foreign ministry liaison to US media, said only that ''no one here is personally persecuted for their ideas.'' ''When their relatives are taken away, sometimes people react emotionally,'' he continued. Fearing reprisals, a few dissidents' relatives have stopped attending Mass as well as the marches. But most still go to church.***
Now European diplomats find themselves in the position of being the bad guys in Castro's books, while Cuban purchases of food and agricultural products from the United States have taken off since the easing of the American embargo two years ago.
Cuba has bought $480 million in U.S. farm products, but it has to pay cash due to a credit ban in the U.S. embargo. European businessmen that are owed millions of dollars for shipments to Cuba are frustrated to see U.S. firms get payed up front.
"The Americans are benefiting because the Cubans are using credit lines from French banks to pay for food imports and putting on hold debt payments to European exporters," said a European diplomat.
Facing European criticism for locking up dissidents, Cuba in May withdrew a request to joining an EU aid and preferential trade pact for former colonies, the Cotonou Agreement, which could have provided the island with up to $100 million (euros) a year in aid.
Diplomats believe Castro concluded he had lost Europe as an ally with the grim prospect of 10 former Soviet bloc nations joining the EU next year with an anti-communist agenda.
Former Czech president Vaclav Havel has nominated leading Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
In a July 26 speech, marking the fist salvos of his guerrilla uprising 50 years ago, Castro charged they would serve as "Trojan horses" for the United States inside the European Union.
"They are full of hatred for Cuba," Castro said. ***