Return To:The Rise of the Cuban Human Rights Movement
by Alex Anton
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In 1952 a twenty-six-year-old Cuban lawyer, Fidel Castro, began
openly to
criticize the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. A litter over a
year later,
on July 26, Castro and 160 idealistic insurgents he had recruited
and
trained attacked the Moncada army post in Santiago de Cuba. They
were
defeated, and Castro was captured, tried, and sentenced to twelve
years in
prison. Freed two years later in a general amnesty, Castro went to
Mexico
where he organized the Twenty-sixth of July Movement which dedicated
itself
to overthrowing Batista. In December of 1956 he landed on the southwestern coast of Cuba's Orient province with a force of eighty-one rebels. Again they were repulsed, and all but twelve were captured or killed. The twelve, including Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, fled into the Sierra Maestra Mountains, where despite severe hardships, they gathered a new following. They organized, armed, and launched an increasingly effective guerrilla campaign that toppled the Batista regime on January 1, 1959.1 Widely hailed as a heroic fighter for democracy and a liberator of an oppressed people, Castro became the darling of the U.S. press and television, and, as a result, a popular figure with the American public, although the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was suspicious of him from the earliest days of his revolution, Castro effectively, and in an amazingly short time, purged the Cuban bureaucracy of Batista supporters and dismantled the old army structure and replaced it with his own military forces under the command of his brother Raul. He also instituted sweeping reforms that provided equal opportunities for education and medical care to the poor and restructured the old elitist social order for the benefit of the lower classes. Meanwhile, the Cuban upper class began to flee the island. As Castro began instituting a totalitarian regime along the lines of a police state, U.S. enthusiasm began to cool. When he began dispossessing the landowning, oligarchic class and collectivizing agriculture, U.S. enthusiasm grew cold. And when he began nationalizing both native and foreign industry, harping continuously on the ills of "Yankee Imperialism", and exporting his brand of revolution to other areas. The United States' attitude became frigid. After Castro expropriated all U.S. business interest in Cuba, Washington, in January 1961, broke diplomatic relations with Havana.2 What irritated, and perhaps alarmed, the U.S. government the most was Castro 's shift toward the Soviet Union. From the beginning Castro had consistently denied any Communist links or any intention of adopting a Soviet model for Cuba. During his April 1959 trip to the United States, he had stated categorically that he was not a Communist and did not agree with the Communist system. Then why did Fidel Castro turn toward the Soviet Union?3 The answer lies in his foreign-policy objectives. He had not fought his revolution just to implement domestic considerations. His ultimate goal was the "Liberation" of Latin America, a goal symbolized in his slogan: "The Andes will become the Sierra Maestra of South America".4 Castro understood from the beginning that his vision for Latin America, sooner or later, would cause a major confrontation with the United States, it would undermine U.S. economic interest and challenge U.S. political leadership in the hemisphere. Therefore, he needed a shield against U.S. power. Obviously, only the Soviet Union had the power or the will to serve as such a shield. Consequently, on May 7, 1960, Castro established diplomatic relations with the USSR, which immediately began supplying most of Cuba's petroleum needs. By the time the U.S. reduced importation of Cuba sugar in July 1960, Cuba was also receiving large quantities of weapons from Russia or her satellites. For the Soviets, their new relationship with the Cubans opened the door to an area previously dominated by the U.S. In an effort to undermine Castro, U.S. administrations began to apply a series of pressures against Cuba. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy approved the CIA sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion and in 1962 got the Organization of American States (OAS) to expel Cuba from the organization. In 1964, during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, the U.S. banned the importation of all sugar from the island and instituted a full economic blockade of Cuba. In that same year, the OAS also imposed diplomatic and economic pressures on Castro, various covert operations attempts against him were being carried out by the CIA.5 These pressures hurt Castro, but did not threaten his regime. The trade sanctions imposed by the Americas undermined his oversees economic agenda, and his own inexperience and mismanagement caused many of his domestic economic programs to go sour.6 His consequent almost total reliance on Soviet aid produce protracted shortages of food and consumer goods on the island. Following Cuba's expulsion from the OAS, Castro also experienced diplomatic setbacks, as several countries, among them Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Chile broke ties with Havana. Finally, the capture and execution of "Che" Guevara in Bolivia in 1967 seriously set back Castro's announced goal of extending the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America. But he remained resilient. Blocked from exporting his revolution to Latin America, Castro began to export it to Africa. Cuban forces played and active role in Angola's civil war in 1975, and Castro's troops were also deployed in Ethiopia in 1977, as well as, in Zaire in 1978. At home Castro began imposing severe restrictions on freedoms of speech and association, institutionalizing these restrictions in the 1976 Cuba Constitution. Although increasingly economically and militarily dependent on the Soviet Union, he maintained a remarkable degree of independence form Moscow. He remained, in the view of the world, an imposing, charismatic symbol of Marxist revolution and social change. None of the diplomatic, economic, or covert initiatives of the U.S. diminished his world stature. Then, in the 1980's President Ronald Reagan's administration found a new and highly effective weapon to use against Castro, and they found it in a most unexpected place, in the cause of human rights. The seemingly sudden emergence of violations of human rights in Cuba as a viable issue, in fact, was not sudden at all. That issue had first been raised in Cuba, years before, by Ricardo Bofill Pages. It was his work and the work of his underground Cuban Committee for Human Rights that began to sway world opinion in the 1980's. It was the documentation of human rights violations in Cuba provided by Ricardo Bofill and his committee that the U.S. later able to use to discredit Castro. The story of Bofill and his Committee for Human Rights between 1976 and 1988 is not only a remarkable story of personal commitment and courage, but the story of the origins of a dramatic shift in U.S. Cuban policy. Ricardo Bofill Pages was born in Madruga, Cuba, a small town outside Havana. He was the only child of Pastora and Ricardo Bofill, Sr. His father was an active member of the sugar workers' union. His mother, on the other hand, was a faithful Catholic. Bofill's childhood was spent in a close-knit, nuclear family which faced many economic hardships. Despite the deprivations of his upbringing, Bofill persevered in pursuit of education. He entered the University of Havana in 1956, where he planned to study philosophy, with an emphasis on Latin American socio-cultural thought. A year later, Batista closed the university after a number of its students had participated in a failed coup. In spite of the turmoil, Bofill was able to obtain a year's scholarship to study marketing in Miami. Near the end of Bofill's year in Miami, Batista's regime collapsed, on January 1, 1959, and was replaced by a new government composed largely of youthful revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro. Filled with hope by the promise of Castro's revolution and exuberant, Bofill returned to Cuba five days later on January 6, 1659,7 and resumed his studies at the University of Havana. In his final year of studies, 1961, he became an instructor in the School of Philosophy, where he taught a course on the Age of Enlightenment. In 1963, Bofill went abroad to attend a series of conferences and seminars on the development of Latin American social thought. His travels took him twice to the Soviet Union. His visit to the USSR made a lasting impression on his political thought. He was dismayed by the restrictions on Soviet citizens' freedom of speech and assembly and distressed to learn from Soviet dissidents Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Yuri Orlov of the existence Soviet forced labor camps. Bofill concluded that the Soviet Communist model was not in any way in harmony with what he took to be the principles of the Cuban revolution.8 After returning to Cuba in 1964, Bofill began discussing with his colleagues at the university the course Castro's revolution had taken. "We were disappointed", Bofill says, "with the way the government was handling affairs".9 The death penalty, which was prohibited by the 1940 Cuban Constitution, had been reinstated by the revolutionary government. Freedom of press and freedom of speech were rapidly disappearing. Newspaper and radio stations that criticized Castro's handling of internal affairs had been closed, and individuals who dissented risked losing jobs or being arrested.10 At first, Bofill kept his concerns relatively private, discussing them in the limited circles of Havana University's faculty and students. But, as the government's actions became more oppressive, his criticism became more public. On July 21, 1965 Bofill organized a seminar dealing with human rights called "Los Derechos Humanos a la Luz del Derecho Internacional" (Human Rights in the Light of International Rights), which was semi clandestine and was held in Doctora Marta Frayde Havana house. In this time, Frayde was an open vocal dissident of Castro regime. Three days after the seminar ended, on August 19, 1965, Bofill was dismissed from his teaching post, charged with "ideological diversionism". He remained unemployed until December 24, 1965, when his friend Ramon Calcines Gordillo, in the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, offered him a position as an instructor at an agricultural school. Disillusioned by undaunted, Bofill continued to criticize the government and began writing a book detailing the failure of the Russian economic model and criticizing political repression in Cuba. The latter task would occupy him between 1965 and October of 1967.11 In October of 1967 Bofill would become a victim of Castro's rift with Russia. The Cuban Revolution was something of a mixed blessing for the Soviet Union. On the one hand, it represented the first major advance of Communism since the Chinese Revolution -- and as the Soviet ideological and strategic struggle with the People's Republic of China grew more serious -- the Soviets became eager to have the Cubans accept their version of socialism rather thatn that of the Chinese. On the other hand, the Cubans confounded the traditional Communist parties in Latin America. Both Castro and "Che" Guevara had little patience with these parties, and at various times withdrew support from Communists and supported their own guerrillas in Venezuela, Colombia and Guatemala. However, nowhere in Latin America did Castro's guerrillas succeed, though the Soviet-sponsored Communist parties did. In 1968, a progressive, leftist military government sympathetic to the Soviets took power in Peru. It initiated land reform and nationalized foreign petroleum holdings. The Peruvian experience, moreover, was soon followed by the victory of Salvador Allende's leftist popular front in Chile. The Latin American Communist parties feared that the Cuban guerrilla revolutionaries would provoke harsh reactions and jeopardize what they had accomplished.12 The Soviets, hence, urged the Cubans to be cautious and to work with the existing Communist parties rather that attempt to supplant them. But the Cubans did not heed that advice, and Moscow decided to clamp down on Castro and forced him to conform. In October of 1967 the Soviet-Cuban trade agreement, upon which the Cuban economy was virtually dependent, was up for renewal. When the Cuban foreign-trade minister arrived in Moscow in October to negotiate renewal of the annual l trade agreement, he was told that the Soviet Union would not increase fuel deliveries by the eight percent the Cubans has requested. Moreover, Moscow declined Cuba's proposal to convert the annual agreement into a three-year pact and refused to set a date for the signing of the new annual accord. 13 When informed of Moscow's intransigent position, Castro was furious. He responded with an act of defiance. When addressing the closing session of a week-long International Cultural Congress in Havana on January 12th of 1968, a meeting attended by five hundred top intellectuals from seventy countries, including Jean Paul Sartre, Lord Bertrand Russell, and prominent Argentine novelist Julio Cortaza, Fidel urged the audience to help him define the role of intellectuals in the revolution. At his oratorical best, he appealed to hem to inform the world of the 'real' value of the Cuban revolution. Castro concluded his speech by chiding the orthodox Communist parties that "remained completely removed from the struggle against imperialism". He noted the failure of Eastern Bloc countries "to mobilize the masses", in support of Cuba at the time of the Missile Crisis of 1962, contending that their failure to act was directed by Moscow. He further cited the lack of resolve shown by the Soviet Union in the handling of the crisis as evidence of the Kremlin's failure to meet the challenge of American imperialism, laying the blame on Nikita Khruschev's policy of co-existence.14 A little over two week later, on January 25, 1968, Castro followed up his charger by exposing the existence of what he called a "treasonous microfaction" in the Cuban Communist Party. The alleged leader of the group was Anibal Escalante, whom Castro labeled an "old-line" communist with strong ties to the Kremlin. Along with Escalante and thirty-four other people, Ricardo Bofill had been arrested in October 8, 1967. After spending five months at Villa Marista, a detention and interrogation facility in Havana, Bofill was formally charged on January 25, 1968 with "ideological diversionism". He and the microfaction were accused of having plotted to persuade Moscow to suspend all economic aid to Cuba in order to force the ouster of Fidel Castro's government. (FALTA NOTES No. 15) Prominent in the evidence presented against the microfaction was Bofill's manuscript "Points for a Critical History of the Cuban Revolution". This work, which had been seized by Cuban authorities, outlines the failure of the Soviet economic model, speculated that Castro had driven "Che" Guevara out of Cuba in a power struggle, and severely criticized Castro's harsh treatment of dissenters. The government's prosecutors charged, and the court agreed, that Bofill's manuscript "totally distorted" the history of the Cuban Revolution.16 In the end, Bofill, found guilty of writing and spreading "enemy propaganda", was sentenced to twelve years in Castillo del Morro Prison in Havana. Bofill contends, "I was never part of any conspiracy against the Cuban government. I had nothing to do with any microfaction. Castro simply attached my name to it because it suited his interest".17 Escalante and his associates may well have been at cross purposes with Castro, arguing that Cuba should conform and align itself with Soviet policy, but that almost certainly, was all that they were guilty of. It is entirely unlikely that Moscow was plotting a coup. While the Soviets were not above staging coup d'etats against allies when it suited their purpose, it is unreasonable to believe that Moscow would have expected that a small group of intellectuals could effect such a coup. In any case, Soviet pressure persuaded Castro to moderate his stance. By late 1968 Castro began to halt his criticism of Moscow and his endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserted the right of the USSR to define the limits of permissible behavior for Communist countries, signaled and end to his friction with the Soviets. 18 During the time he served at Castillo del Morro Prison, Bofill was subjected to a near-starvation diet, bayonet stabbing, and psychological torture which included long periods of dark isolation. He also witnessed torture of fellow prisoners and executions by firing squads. And worst of all, he has said, he worried over the "mental anguish and economic deprivations his family suffered".19 His emotional turmoil, coupled with the harsh experiences he witnessed, as well as endured, brought Bofill to the brink of what he has called a "mental crisis". He had two options: to allow himself to sink into catatonia, "overwhelmed by skepticism and desperation" or to defend himself against the "brutal actions of his oppressors".20 He determined to fight back and to fight back with the only weapon at his disposal, words. He managed to smuggle out of prison a long series of letters, which he called his "balitas" (little bullets), addressed to foreign statesmen, among them, England's Ambassador to Cuba, David Thomas, Mexico's foreign trade representative, Enrique Buck Flores, Chile's President, Eduardo Frey, and Chilean presidential candidate, Salvador Allende. In each case he asked the recipient to make some king of response, although he indicated that most such replies would, he realized, have to be indirect. He got no responses, direct or indirect, for quite some time. Then, in 1972, Bofill received his first acknowledgment , indirect though it was. A letter he had sent to Salvador Allende , now Chile's president, was placed in the hands of one of Allende's student supporters. When Castro was on an official visit to Chile speaking in the Caupolican Theater in Santiago, the student, referring to the allegations in Bofill's letter, asked a series of critical questions (FALTA LA PAGINA 11) embassies, requesting that the information be forwarded to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNH.R.C.), to human rights monitoring groups such as Amnesty International and Americas Watch, and to the international press. While CCPDH struggled to establish itself in Cuba and to develop channels of communications with international human rights organizations, U.S.-Cuban relations entered a new phase. Since October 18, 1960, when the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, Philip Bonsal, had been recalled for "extended consultation"23 there had been no U.S. diplomatic presence in Havana. However, after 1976, the Jimmy Carter administration became interested in possibly normalizing relations with Cuba. U.S. foreign policy makers reasoned that new political and economic agreements with Havana might moderate Castro's behavior, or at least provide instruments for U.S. leverage, something difficult in the absence of U.S. Cuban diplomatic relations. For her part, Cuba, was feeling Soviet pressures to open détente with the United States. And normalization with Washington would offer Havana advanced technology, commercial trade, and a break in its hemispheric isolation. Thus, in April 1977, the two government signed an agreement relative to each other's fishing grounds, the boundaries of which had been long in dispute. The following June, agreement was also reached for establishing an "Interest Section" in each capital starting in September, 1977, sort of unofficial embassies. These diplomatic steps were accompanied by an exchange of visits between U.S. and Cuban trade officials and businessmen. 24 But President Carter emphasized that Cuba respect for human rights would be a prior condition for any further moves towards normalization. Heartened by Carter's announcement, Bofill immediately arranged to meet with Barbara Hutchinson, the cultural officer at the U.S. Interest Section in Havana. He asked if she would "forward letters he had written to Andrei Sakharov and other dissident in Europe".25 She told him that she could not forward letters to private individuals, but that letters addressed to officials in the United States government, to the United Nations or to human rights organizations she could deliver. Bofill took her offer and began to write to American officials as well as to the United Nations, to Amnesty International, and to Americas Watch, reporting on Cuba's dismal human rights record. Between late 1977 and early 1982, Bofill tried repeatedly to get an appointment with Lyle F. Lane and then with Wayne Smith, who in 1979 replaced Lane as the Chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana. But both Lane and Smith declined to see him.26 The American representatives at the Interest Section were more concerned with normalizing U.S. relations with Castro than with human rights violations. They viewed Bofill's allegations as a side issue at best, and as a possible obstacle to normalization, at worst. The prospect of normalized relations with the U.S. never materialized because Castro's foreign policy got in the way.27 In late 1977, Castro dispatched a second Cuban expeditionary force to Angola and combat troops to defend Ethiopia against Somalia, the latter at the request of the Marxism regime of Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam. The U.S. also learned that a shipment of Soviet Mig-23s had arrived in Cuba and the Shaba II incident involving alleged Cuban intervention in the Angolan-sponsored invasion of Zaire in May of 1978 flared up. Cuba also resumed excursions into Central America, sending military advisors and large-scale shipments of arms to Nicaragua at the end of 1978.28 In the summer of 1980, an unregulated flow of Cuban refugees to Florida, which became known as the "Mariel Boatlift", finally sealed off any possibility of normalization.29 Though Lyle F. Lane and Wayne Smith remained indifferent to Bofill's allegations, some diplomats from other countries proved more receptive to his concerns. The Spanish Ambassador, Francisco Ortiz Sanchez met with Bofill to discuss the CCPDH's human rights allegations and offered a communications channel to the outside world through his embassy. The French embassy also promised to forward Bofill's reports to international human rights monitoring groups, and the Costa Rican Consul General in Havana, Oscar Vargas Bello, sent CCPDH reports directly to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. But Bofill's increased international access was halted on April 15, 1980. That day he was arrested on charges of "enemy propaganda" and re-sentenced to eight years in Combinado del Este Prison. Prior to his arrest, Bofill had provided the world with thousands of pages documenting human rights violations in Cuba, and his efforts had begun to kindle interest in diplomatic circles and among world human rights organizations. Bofill realized that he had been living on borrowed time, that at any moment the authorities could drag him from his home to prison. He had lived a lonely existence, for most of his friends, including many of his university colleagues, had avoided contact with him. But why had the Cuban government allowed Bofill to pursue such activities for four years? The authorities had refrained from interfering with him for a number of reasons. First, they viewed Bofill as insignificant. What he had been doing produced, at the time, no significant effect in the international community. As far as Castro could see, little official attention had been paid to Bofill. Second, Castro did not want to create a martyr. The disappearance of a well-know human rights activist might focus unwanted attention on Havana. Third, the Cuban government wanted to gather as much intelligence as it could about who was associated with Bofill and who his sympathizers were, both at the embassies and among the citizenry. In short, Castro saw little, or no threat in Bofill 's activities.30 During Bofill's second imprisonment, some of his fellow inmates became in his work and asked to join the CCPDH. He admitted between thirty and forty new members, all of whom were political prisoners who had, in some way or another, crossed the Castro government. Among the new members were former University of Havana philosophy professor, Adolfo Rivero Caro and former University of Havana economics professor, Enrique Hernandez Mendez. The most impressive new member of the CCPDH, who later would become its secretary general, was Gustavo Arcos Bergnes. Arcos has been Castro's former ambassador to Belgium and the Netherlands. He had been one of the founders of the Cuban revolution and had been Castro's right hand man in the famous attack on Batista's Army barracks in July 1953.31 Bofill and his group organized other prisoners into a network that reported to CCPDH detailed accounts of atrocities inflicted upon prisoners: dark isolation cells the size of coffins, beatings, castrations, electroshock, and executions. Adolfo Rivero Caro recalled a particular incident in which several young men, "Balseros", the name given to Cubans caught attempting to leave the island on rafts, protested being lumped in with common criminals instead of being placed with the political prisoners. One day, in a show of protest, the young men refused to re-enter their cells after an exercise session. The prison authorities responded by ordering the guards to attack them with machetes. "The camage was incredible". Rivero somberly recalled "Some of the young men tried to run and got caught in barbed wire, all the while being mercilessly hacked by prison guards".32 Rivero wrote an account of the event in a "microscopic hand" and smuggled the tiny piece of paper out of prison by passing it to a visiting family member who sent it to Miami-based Cuban exiles for publication. At the same time, human rights abuses recorded by the CCPDH were increasingly reaching foreign governments and international human rights organizations by way of channels established with foreign diplomats. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, U.S.-Cuban relations entered a new era, one characterized by increased hostility and aggressiveness on both sides. The change of climate would have a decisive impact on both Bofill and the CCPDH. From the outset, the Reagan administration adopted a hard-line posture vis-a-vis Cuba. U.S. foreign policy officials knew that Castro was increasingly more dependent on the Soviets economically and military. Senior administration officials, among them Assistant Secretary of State, Elliot Abrams, were convinced that "Fidel was not willing to legitimately negotiate with the U.S based on the experiences of the Carter administrations in the late 1970's" and "Cuba's financial and military dependence on the USSR".33 Despite these convictions, Reagan made an attempt to, at least, establish common ground with Havana by sending Ambassador -at -Large, Lt. Gen. Vernon A. Walters to Cuba. Ambassador Walters offered Castro "compensation in the form of normalization of relations with the U.S. trade, technology, and other economic benefits" in return for "cessation of destabilizing activities in third world countries and political reform within Cuba"34 His proposal was resoundingly rejected by Castro. Castro inflexibility stemmed largely from increasing dependence on Moscow. His relationship with the Kremlin had yielded substantial advantages for the Cuban government over the past decades, advantages in the form of generous subsidies for the Cuban economy and for modernization of its armed forces. Cuba would have found it impossible to replicate such advantages elsewhere. Even the U.S. would have been hard-pressed to match the Soviet's level of economic and military support for Havana. Because of its success in advancing Soviet interests in Africa, including securing Marxism regimes in both Angola and Ethiopia, Cuba gained particularly large economic concessions form the Soviet Union in the post-1975 period. Cuba got an increase of over $9.5 billion in Soviet assistance between 1976-1979, a 135 percent increase, for the four-year period, over the total increase in assistance provided during the previous fourteen years, 1961-1975. To insure Cuban military triumphs in the third world, the Soviet Union significantly bolstered Castro's military resources. Between 1970 and 1982 the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) doubled in size. Even more significant for the FAR was the acquisition of new weapons inventories, including Mig-23's the first shipment of which arrived in the spring of 1978. Soviet arms deliveries to Cuba reached well over sixty million metric tons in 1981, a figure more than three times the level of annual deliveries in the previous five years.35 Soviet economic and military aid to Cuba also served Castro by elevating his political status among underdeveloped nations. In 1979, at the Sixth Annual Non-Aligned Movement Summit held in Havana, he was officially named leader of the organization. His election fulfilled a long-sought goal for Castro and represented the apex of his career. In response to Castro's increasing dependence on the USSR and his newly acquired ascendance in the third world, the Reagan administration began an even tighter economic boycott of the island. All U.S. tourist and business travel to Cuba was banned. Moreover, in a effort to thwart Cuban support of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration funneled financial assistance, military advisors, and weaponry to the Nicaraguan Contras. And the Reagan administration targeted Castro's Achilles heel-- human rights violations-- for a new arrow. The human rights issue was an unexpected assault. Documentation that Castro' s government systematically violated the thirty articles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Cuba was a signatory, could be used, the Reagan administration concluded, as a vehicle to discredit Castro both in Cuba and abroad. As the U.S. permanent Ambassador to the UN, Jeanne Kikpatrick, put it, "Condemnation by the United Nations Human Rights Commission would be a heavy blow to the prestige of Fidel Castro's government".36 Furthermore, it would interfere with Castro's ambition to be seen as a leader of, and as a spokesman for, third world nations. Such a condemnation would impede Cuba's efforts to improve its ties to Western Europe, Latin America, and Canada. Finally, as former Assistant Secretary of State, Elliot Abrams, said, the UN initiative was aimed at "creating a political space within Cuba that would allow for an opposition to flourish".37 The general issue of human rights had first been cited by the Carter administration as a central component of American foreign policy. In the Western Hemisphere, concern focused on Latin America, where the 1970's marked tens of thousands of murders and disappearances and the perverse use of torture in a host of right wing dictatorships. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Paraguay were all guilty. The deaths of between forty and fifty thousand persons in Nicaragua, most of them killed in Anastasio Somoza's attacks on the civilian population, further raised the body count. However, Communist nations, including Cuba, with their closed societies, were much less subject to scrutiny. Carter's efforts, perforce, had to be limited to looking at right wing dictatorships; Reagan was in a different position, at least relative to Cuba. As Elliot Abrams put it "it was not only necessary to criticize any government that was engaged in a pattern of physical abuses like El Salvador, or Chile, but also a government that had set up a repressive system where there was no democracy ... no freedom of speech, no freedom of press, and that was Cuba".38 In implementing its human rights initiative relative to Cuba, the Reagan administration took a page from its Russian and Eastern European policy book. Along with such dissidents as, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and Andrei Sakharov, the administration began to mention the name of Ricardo Bofill. As a result of the recognition, Ricardo Bofill and the CCPDH found themselves in the limelight at the center of the world stage. As a result of global attention focused on Bofill, now dubbed by Amnesty International a "Prisoner of Conscience", Ambassador Pierre Descamp, on behalf of French President Francois Mitterand, a socialist who had been sympathetic to Castro, petitioned Castro for Bofill's release. Castro grudgingly complied and Bofill was "conditionally" released in May 1982. After leaving Combinado, "the most horrible detention of all my years in jail"39 he continued CCPDH's campaign to expose Cuba's human rights record. But this time the Cuban government kept a close eye on his work and increasingly harassed him. On April 29, 1983, after a series of telephoned threats, that he believed came from government agents, Bofill became fearful for his life and fled to the French embassy. Cuban authorities immediately had the building surrounded by guards. The French objected, and a diplomatic crisis ensued between Paris and Havana. That evening, the French ambassador met with Cuban Vice-president Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, who gave assurances that Bofill would not be further harassed and would be given permission to leave the country if he wanted. The next day, Bofill left the embassy and went home. But the Cuban government's promises proved to be empty. The harassment of the Cuban dissident did not cease, and his visa request was denied.40 Castro did not want Bofill roaming the world making accusations against him. Better to keep him at home and control him, for by then, the dissident had international recognition. Castro reasoned he could keep a close watch on Bofill and his committee and discredit both by labeling them as a group formed and directed "by the American intelligence community, specifically the CIA".41 Five moths later on September 21, 1983, two French cinema journalists, Renaud Delkaourne and Dominique Nasplezes, asked Bofill for a filmed interview at his home in a suburb of Havana. Bofill agreed. The reporters described him as a "small, thin man who gave the impression of both fragility and force. His gestures were constantly nervous, as though he were always on guard. Only his gaze, amplified by large glasses, spoke of his determination". The journalist began the interview by asking, "What is your current situation?" "I demand", Bofill responded, "that the Cuban government respect my rights. My rights to move about freely, to be able to work, to not be under twenty-four-hour surveillance". He followed with a twenty minute denunciation of the Cuban government's abuse of human rights.42 Upon leaving Bofill's house, the reporters took a taxi. The taxi driver was visibly nervous because, while the reporters had been inside Bofill's house, he had spotted police observers. At first nothing happened. Then, after they had driven a short way, a police car suddenly blocked the road. Two others sped up, surrounded them, arrested them, and took the journalists to immigration office. There, a Captain Antonio, who identified himself as an immigration official, asked them with whom they had been talking. When they told him, he shouted back: "Bofill is an enemy of the Revolution".43 Only after two days of lengthy interrogation was a French diplomat permitted to see the journalists. He asked a few polite questions, mumbled something about an evening plane to Paris, and made promises to return the next day. But five days went by before he appeared again, and then only to make more vague promises and disappear for good. As the interrogation resumed, it became obvious to the reporters that their inquisitors wanted confessions. "You will stay here until you tell us the truth", they were warned. "You are manipulated by Cuban opponents abroad and you have come here to spread anti-Castro propaganda. It is in your best interest to cooperate with us."44 Still the reporters refused to give in. Finally, after then days, Captain Antonio informed the Frenchmen that "the Commander-in-Chief, Fidel Castro, has decided that you shall not remain here. You will be released in the name of good relations between Paris and Havana".45 Immediately the reporters were put on a plane and sent home. Castro had made his point. He wanted to discourage all reporters from interviewing any human rights activists. In the meantime, on September 24, three days after he had talked with the French reporters in his home, Ricardo Bofill was arrested and charged with anti-revolutionary activities. On October 23, 1983, he was put on trial, charged with "enemy propaganda and illicit association". He refused a court-appointed lawyer and chose to defend himself. "In any case", he said, "the outcome of this trial is obvious; I am already convicted".46 The trail was filmed by the state television in hopes of capturing a dramatic confession that could be shown both at home and abroad. But the cinematographers were disappointed. Bofill refused to recant. In his final statement, he proclaimed that, "the enemy of the revolution is the one who oppresses the people, the one who has ordered his masquerade, Castro himself".47 Bofill was convicted in December 1983, and sentenced to seventeen years in Combinado del Este Prison. Within weeks of Bofill's imprisonment, television and newspapers reported that he was suffering from "a cardiac disorder of the utmost seriousness". Bofill took this planted story to be an attempt on the part of the government "to cover itself in case an extremely rough interrogation"48 should result in his death. In fact, Bofill's heart was in excellent condition. In late February 1984, state security officials moved Bofill from Combinado del Este to Villa Marista, an interrogation and detention center. He now began to think that his life was, indeed, in danger, that they might simply kill him. Instead, they subjected him to repeated beatings, solitary confinement, and a near-starvation diet.49 Castro faced a dilemma very like that faced by the governments of Russia and some East European countries vis-a-vis their dissidents. He would very much have liked to silence Bofill and the CCPDH by perpetual imprisonment or perhaps assassination. But he did not dare risk the alienation of allies or of world opinion that such action would bring. Consequently, he had to allow them to exist, though they were seriously tarnishing his image. Thus under mounting pressure from the international community generally and from France 's president, Francois Mitterand, specifically, Castro released Bofill "due to poor health" in August 1985. Three months earlier, the U.S. government, largely as a result of lobbying efforts by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), established Radio Marti to transmit news and entertainment programming to Cuba. Castro raged that the station was a "violation of Cuba sovereignty ... an act of aggression and a form of psychological warface".50 But CANF chairman, Jorge Mas Canosa, called Radio Marti "the first serious step n disarming Castro's monopoly of information on the island"51 For Bofill and the CCPDH, Radio Marti represented protection. Frequently mentioned on the air, they became better known than ever, both in Cuba and abroad. Hence, it became ever more difficult for the Cuban government to silence or eliminate them. Radio Marti also served Bofill as a recruiting device for new members of his organization. Actress Barbarita Jover and her husband, Ernesto Lopez Fundora, for example, first learned of Bofill on Radio Marti. "For the first time we heard a voice from within Cuba that expressed ideas which were in unison with our thoughts",52 says Jover who, along with her husband, joined the CCPDH. Even so, Bofill continued to be harassed and threatened, and on August 27, 1986, he again fled to the French embassy. This time, Cuban authorities did not merely surround the compound as they had in 1983, but threatened to enter the embassy and arrest him. They held that Bofill was on parole and had no right to enter the embassy and that the French had no right to grant him political asylum.53 The French foreign ministry in Paris responded that any effort to arrest Bofill at the embassy "could cause a disruption in relations"54 between Paris and Havana. After five months of negotiation between the French and Cuban governments, on January 31, 1987, Bofill left the embassy. The French foreign minister issued a written statement from Paris stating that he was convinced that "Mr. Bofill will not be troubled after leaving the embassy, and that he will be able to lead a normal existence".55 During the moths Bofill was holed up in the French embassy, the Reagan administration had been making preparations to focus world opinion on human rights abuses in Cuba.56 The hard-hitting campaign was led by Vernon Walters, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN and a member of the U.S. delegation to the UNH.R.C., the exiled Cuban post Armando Valladares, who had served twenty-two years in Castro's prisons. After his release in 1982, Valladares had written and published Against All Hope, a moving chronicle of his brutal experiences in prison.57 The book had become an international best-seller that focused world attention on Castro's handling of political prisoners. At the annual meeting of the UNH.R.C. in Geneva in early March 1987, Valladares raised the issue of Cuban human rights violations and stated "The United States" objective was to demonstrate that in Cuba torture, murder and violations of human rights is a systematic practice".58 After Valladares finished, Ambassador Walters continued. "Cuba has more political prisoners, per capita, than any other country in the world. And it is staggering to me to find that in the twenty-eight years of the Castro regime, the attention of the world has never been drawn to that".59 Ambassador Walters then made a point of noting that exposing Cuba's dismal human rights record "is a very important matter of U.S. foreign policy".60 Shortly afterwards, the U.S. delegation introduced a resolution condemning "massive, systematic and flagrant abuses of human rights" by the Cuban government and calling for a UN inspection team to visit Cuba. In an impassioned plea for passage of the resolution, Ambassador Walters proclaimed that Cuba's record of "brutality ranks proportionately among the great tragedies of this century", and concluded with a warning that a vote against the U.S. resolution would "aggravate a new crisis of perception from which the UN may be unable to recover".61 Cuba's deputy minister of foreign affairs, Raul Roa Kouri, responded that "any attempt by the United Nations Human Rights Commission to send an investigative team would be rejected outright".62 Despite intense pressure by the U.S. on Latin American and third world countries, the resolution failed. Most South American delegates voted against it. Though not pleased with Castro's human rights record, some were skeptical about the U.S. account of the situation in Cuba.63 But the vote was as close as it could get, nineteen to eighteen. Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela voted against the resolution along with Cuba's allies, Mexico and Nicaragua, and Brazil abstained. Costa Rica was the only Latin American nation to vote with the United States. Armando Valladares has reflected that "we knew that it would be very difficult to achieve a resolution against Cuba in 1987. But that was only the beginning. Because very year afterwards, in every international forum, we would denounce it, until the United Nations sent an investigative team to Cuba".64 The Geneva meeting of 1987 was a major importance. Though the resolution failed, the debate and deliberations awoke interest around the globe and many countries began seriously to worry. The resolution had failed by only one vote, and an inquiry by the UNH.R.C. carried the risk for Castro that U.S. charges would be supported. Should that happen, Cuba would find itself listed by the commission along with Iran, Afghanistan, El Salvador, South Africa and Chile as pariah countries.65 And another meeting of the UN commission was schedule for 1988. The Geneva meeting and the new U.S. initiative also emboldened Bofill. In June 1987, he received a letter from President Ronald Reagan assuring him that the U.S. would continue to press for international investigations of human rights in Cuba. "As more facts become available to more persons, we expect increased support", Reagan wrote.66 Bofill decided the time was right to challenge Castro more directly. On October 23, 1987, Bofill issued a manifesto he called "An Appeal from Havana". Seizing upon the spirit of "solidarity" in the wind at the time, he addressed his manifesto to the leaders of Eastern European dissident movements, among them Laslo Rajk of Hungary, Andrei Sakharov of Russia, Lech Walessa of Poland and Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia. The occasion he chose was the second anniversary commemoration of the murder of a Polish priest, Jerzy Popieluzce, being held at the church of San Juan de Letran in the Havana suburb of El Vedado. More than two hundred people were present. About half of them were CCPDH sympathizers. The rest were church members and foreign press. Just before mass was begin, Bofill called the press together and read his statement, which began: "In this country, we are advocates for the return of the writ of habeas corpus, for the right of free expression of thought, and the full use of the right to dissent and to oppose the government. In this country, we advocate freedom for all Cubans".67 The remainder of the document constituted, in effect, a political platform for internal opposition to Castro's government. When he finished reading, sixty-six CCPDH members signed the "Appeal". Authorities took no action against any who had signed the manifesto. The whole matter was now too public, too much in the world's eye for them to do that. And the 1988 meeting of the UNH.R.C. was impending. Instead, Castro sought to discredit Bofill and the CCPDH. "The organization is made up of no more than Bofill and maybe three other people, "Cuba's foreign ministry spokesman, Omar Mendoza, told a Los Angeles Times reporter "This is not a respected organization, and it has no credibility. If you ask anyone on the street about the organization, no one knows of it".68 As the Genova meeting of the UNH.R.C. approached, Bofill and the CCPDH became ever more daring. A little over two weeks later, on November 11, Bofill and several CCPDH members, including Edmigio Lopez Castillo and Enrique Hernandez, met at the home of CCPDH member Tania Diaz Castro to record a radio program for broadcast by Radio Marti. They called the program "Stalinism and Repression in Cuba". The moderator, Rolando Cartaya, a Cuban journalist, opened the program:
Dear listeners and fellow-citizens,
We have all met a private home
in Havana as members of the Cuban Committee
for Human Rights, headed by Dr. Ricardo Bofill,
in order to draw a balance of the human rights
situation as experienced in our country this year.
The fact, that we have been able to do so is,
in itself, without precedent in the history of
human rights activism in Cuba.69
Meanwhile, the CCPDH continued to stack up in the offices of the U.S., the UN, and various international human rights organizations, mounds of documented violations of human rights and the U.S. was making preparation for the Geneva meeting. Speaking at a luncheon at the University of Miami, UN Ambassador Vernon Walters predicted that he would soon get the necessary support in the UN for a resolution calling for an investigation in Cuba. "The Castro regime has had a free ride on human rights abuses for twenty-nine years". At the 1988 UNH.R.C. meeting, he said, "we will see who will stand up on behalf of the silent prisoners in Cuba".71 From Cuba, Bofill watched carefully as the Genova meeting convened. He had plans of his own, and timing was crucial. On February 14, 1988, just at the point that the diplomats in Genova had finished their preliminary business and were moving to consider the Cuban question, Bofill and the CCPDH opened the first independent, i.e. non-state sponsored, art exhibit held in Havana since the revolution. Unable to secure a public gallery, the CCPDH staged the exposition in the home of Committee members Carlos Valdes Dapena and Alicia Fernandez Arrate. It featured works by Afro-Cuban artist Raul Montesinos which explored the contemporary legacy of "Slavery in Cuba". Reinaldo Bragado Bretana, a Cuban poet, had written a sort of catalog commentary on the exhibit.72 Some two hundred people came to the opening. Among them were foreign journalist, diplomats from various embassies, representatives of Americas Watch, and a number of human rights lawyers from New York. Just before the opening ceremonies were to begin, Bofill called a press conference, as he had done at the Church of San Juan de Letran three and a half months before. This time, instead of issuing a statement, Bofill invited the press to interview several mothers in the crowd whose sons and daughters had been kidnapped, tortured, or executed. There was no police interference at the opening. Four days later, Bofill held a second showing of the exhibition. Word had spread, and it attracted even more diplomats, reporters, and foreign observers, than had the first showing. But this time Castro decided to act. A large crowd of what appeared to be outraged citizens gathered outside the house. Division General Jose Abrante, the Minister of interior and head of Cuban intelligence, was standing across the street. One of Abrante's deputies came to the front door. Bofill met him there and told him that he and his friends were simply having a private gathering and that Cuban intelligence had not been invited. The deputy responded that there was a fierce mob outside that wanted to hurt the occupants and he was there to protect them. Bofill, who knew that the "fierce mob", was, in fact, largely Cuban intelligence agents dressed in civilian clothes, told the deputy to inform Jose Abrante that he must control the "mob".73 As some journalist and foreign diplomats left, they were harassed by the crowd. Inside the house, CCPDH members prepared for the worst. They shut all windows and anxiously waited for whatever might come. Their vigil lasted over four hours, when, finally, the crown dispersed. There were no arrests, but during the weeks following the incident, Bofill and his activists were soon subjected to attacks in the Cuban media. During that time, NBS television reporter, Maria Shiver, visited Cuba and interviewed Fidel Castro, on February 21, 1988. She asked him why he was allowing a human rights monitoring group to exist in Cuba. Fidel shouted back, "No, what we have a tiny little group of counter-revolutionaries being manipulated by the American Interest Section. Here there are no human rights organizations". Shriver stood her ground. "But", she said, there is a Cuban Committee for Human Rights". Castro, annoyed by her insistence, answered that "an organization of liars and cheats is what we have. And they will never be legalized. That is their illusion". Shriver pressed on, "Then there has not been any change in respect to human rights in Cuba?". Irritated, Castro replied, "No. Here we maintain the absolute respect for Cuban citizens... There is no revolution in the world, no country in this world... where the respect for human rights is as great!".74 Meanwhile, in Genova, Cuba and the U.S. were engaged in a struggle. Once again the U.S. delegation was led by UN Ambassador Vermon Walters and Armando Valladares, who had recently been elevated from delegation member to U.S. Ambassador to the UNH.R.C. In contrast to the tough lobbying and pressure campaign the U.S. had waged in 1987, the 1988 U.S. campaign was much softer in tone. The United States's thirteen-paragraph resolution was carefully worded so as to avoid antagonizing delegates reluctant to criticize Cuba. Without condemning the Castro government, it called for Cuba to respond to allegations about rights violations, including severe "limits on political freedom, arbitrary arrests, forced labor and the torture of political prisoners". It called for the UNH.R.C., which had no punitive power, to "study carefully" Cuba's rights performance. The resolution did not rebuke or censure the Castro government. Instead, it simply asked the UN secretary general would then report his findings to the UNH.R.C. the next year.75 Castro had announced in 1987, before the U.S. resolution lost by one vote, that Cuba would not admit a UN team to investigate the island's human rights record. But during the intervening year the pressures on him had, largely because of the work of Bofill and the CCPDH, become irresistible. Hence, at the 1988 Genova meeting the Cuban government gave in and invited the UNH.R.C.'s chairman, Alioune Sene of Senegal, and five members to come to Cuba and observe the human rights situation. Cuba's Ambassador to the United Nations, Oscar Oramas Oliva, said Havana invited the UN delegation because, "We don't have anything to hide".76 In fact, the invitation was a compromise worked out by Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Argentina to avoid a vote. Havana accepted the compromise because a vote condemning Cuban human rights abuses would compromise Castro's standing in the third world.77 For its part, the U.S. won points by accepting the Latin American brokered proposal and a chance to have Castro's abuses exposed. It was a good deal for the U.S. They traded a vote that was too close to call for an investigation that Ambassador Sene promised would be impartial, competent, and credible.78 The six-member UN delegation visited Cuba September 16-25, 1988. For Bofill and the members of CCPDH, the day to show the world the truth about Cuba's human rights record had finally arrived. They handed a 110 page report outlining Cuban human rights abuses to the UN office in Havana.79 Ricardo Bofill now decided to leave Cuba and to continue his work abroad. He asked for, and was granted an exit visa, named Gustavo Arcos Bergnes secretary general of the CCPDH, and on October 5, 1988 left for Frankfurt where the International Society For Human Rights had invited him to speak. He then traveled for four months, talking with world leaders and speaking to human rights organizations. His speaking tour culminate in an address to the United Nation Human Rights Commission in Genova in March, 1989. FALTA NOTES No. 80 On February 21, 1989, the UN delegation published its report on the Cuban human rights situation. The report showed in detail that liberties of speech, movement, and assembly were almost completely denied to Cuban citizens. The report listed the names of sixteen hundred Cuban who had been tortured, beaten, denied jobs for political reasons, or prevented from leaving the country.81 Bofill was enthusiastic about the findings. "This was something unprecedented", he recalls. "It was a sign that made us feel optimistic. It gave us hope that our people could have liberty."82 The seed of liberty and freedom of thought and expression were the roots of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution. Since the triumph of the revolution, Castro, both at home and abroad, portrayed himself as a guardian of human rights and the champion of the "oppressed". This facade endured for decades, however, systematic violations of human rights began early under the Castro regime. < /td> |
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