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HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA Only Rights of the State |
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The subcommittees met at 10 a.m., in room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Gus Yatron and Hon. Michael D. Barnes (chairmen of the subcommittees) presiding.
Mr. YATRON.
Our final witness on this panel is Carlos Ripoll. Dr Ripoll, please go ahead with your statement.
[Statement of Carlos Ripoll, professor of Romance Languages, Queens College]
Mr. Ripoll. Thank you. I would first like to thank you for inviting me here today to state my point of view regarding the present status of human rights in Cuba.
It is a difficult subject to address. The Government of Cuba does not, in fact, recognize individual rights, but only those of the state.
Cuba's Socialist Constitutionadopted in 1976grants certain rights to the individual but those rights are rendered now by article 61 of the same document in which it is stated clearly that, and I quote, "None of the freedoms which are recognized for citizens may be exercised contrary to the existence and objectives of the socialist state."
The rights of man are defined in the American Declaration of Independence as those which by their very nature are inalienable.
In other words those rights pertain to every man. To subject the individual human liberties to the whims of the government like Fidel Castro's even when they claim to be working toward collective progress is inconsistent with the nature of those rights.
Almost 100 years ago José Martí, founder of the Cuban nation wisely warned that "Freedoms" and I am quoting "like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together. You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all."
Since its foundation in 1976 by the late Elena Mederos, a champion of human rights in Cuba, I have collaborated with Of Human Rights, a Washington-based independent organization that monitors violations of human rights in Cuba. I will be addressing the issues of freedom of expression and information in Cuba because, as a professor of literature at Queens College of the City University of New York, I am particularly interested in those freedoms.
Beyond that, I firmly believe that freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and the touchstone of all freedoms as it was described by the General Assembly of the United Nations at its inaugural session in 1946.
The report that I am submitting to this committee is an updated version of a report I presented last year to the Organization of American States on the same subject. The report includes a brief historical background about the struggle with which the Cuban nation through two wars of independence and 57 years of developing democratic form of government and which was forcibly stopped by the imposition of a Marxist-Leninist system upon Cuban society.
The introduction is followed by an explanation of the process through which the Cuban Government has secured absolute control over the mass media, a development directly related to the main subject of the report, which is violations of freedom of expression and information by the government of Fidel Castro.
To summarize briefly, shortly after it came to power the Castro regime ordered the confiscation of all newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations that had served the interests of the Batista dictatorship. Later, and in more arbitrary form, the rest of the media were expropriated and nationalized until absolute government control over all means of information was achieved.
This second part of the report sheds light on the total lack of unbiased information available to Cuban citizens and is a warning against the inevitable repetition of such events in Latin American countries if their governments shape themselves on the pattern of the Cuban revolution.
Nicaragua where severe censorship of the press began with the declaration of the state of emergency 2 years ago is a case in point. The Sandinista elements that control the Council of State recently proposed a law which, among other restrictions, would have compelled foreign and local journalists to reveal their sources of information. That would have enabled the Government to control all broadcasting.
Fortunately, only 2 weeks ago, the proposal was withdrawn under pressure from the few opposition members of the Council.
The first victim of censorship is always the press, because no totalitarian government can withstand criticism much less public denunciation of its errors and excesses.
The next victim is always the creative writer, because his mission is to question dogma. Therefore, the report continues with factual accounts and testimony about the absence of creative freedom in Cuba and about the repression to which writers are subjected.
There can be no more eloquent proof of repression in Cuba than the silence imposed on its poets and writers and the numbers among them who have sought exile in order to survive.
Two Sources of Dissidence in Cuba
There are two important sources of dissidence in Cuba today, and both could bring substantial change to the country in the future. The first source is made up of those who might be called the technopragmatists, young professionals schooled in and by the system in the last 25 years who find themselves relegated to lower and unimportant echelons in the government. These men and women are not permitted active participation in policymaking or in the running of the country.
They are, instead, angry and silent witnesses of the repeated mistakes made by the old guerrillas and Communist Party elders in every segment of the economy, the political structure and the obsessive internationalist adventures launched by Fidel Castro.
The other focus of dissidence can be found in the very ranks of Socialists, Marxists and adherents to other forms of leftist thought. These men and women reject the Stalinist practices of the Cuban Government. Most of them have been ostracized from the political process and many are harassed and even jailed.
I would like to read to you a paragraph from a letter smuggled out of Cuba. The identity of the author cannot be revealed for obvious reasons. Suffice it to say that he is a veteran Communist presently imprisoned for having voiced his opposition to the Castro government and the letter says, and I quote:
If my friends and I owe anything to these last 15 years of persecution and jail, it is the possibility of evolving in a positive direction from the superfluous and radical socialist (communist) positions of former periods to the profound and galvanized democratic convictions we hold at the present time. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that there exists in Cuba todaythis letter was received in this country last yeara potentially powerful democratic socialist movement among the Cuban intelligentsia, among the better informed sectors of our society and even in the very heart of the Cuban Communist Party, of government agencies, research centers and institutions of higher education. It is worth noting the spontaneous empathy with which our people only recently were following the democratic struggle of the Polish workers. I am convinced that in a not too distant future the pluralistic model which needs to be implemented in our country will include as part of its democratic structure a socialist component that can work on equal parity with Christians, nationalists, ecologists and the thousands of personal denominations possible, toward achieving exemplary respect for human rights and for social justice.
It is because I consider this type of dissidence so important and because it is yet another manifestation of the absence of freedom of thought which prevails in Cuba, that the last part of my report deals with the cases of Ariel Hidalgo and Ricardo Bofill.
These two young professors have recently been sentenced to long jail terms for having voiced their political opinions under present Cuban Government. These two cases reveal once again the extent to which freedom of expression and thought are absent in Cuba and the severity of the punishment inflicted upon those who dare to exercise their basic human rights.
On the basis of the information set forth in this report, one can easily conclude that there is neither freedom of information or freedom of expression in Cuba today, if we understand these freedoms to be those proclaimed in articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which state, and I quote,
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom either alone or in community with others and in public or in private to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
The Government of Cuba, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, continues to rule in violation of these rights.
Thank you very much.
[Mr. Ripoll's prepared statement follows:]
Prepared statement of Prof. Carlos Ripoll, Queens College of the City University of New York
Freedom of Expression and Information in Cuba
Historic Background
The love of freedom of expression and information was born in Cuba early in the nineteenth century. One of the measures most supported by the progressive elements of the island when the Constitution of the Courts of Cadiz went into effect in 1812 was Article 371, which annulled censorship: "All Spaniards [Cubans were called Spaniards too] have the right to write, publish and print their political ideas without need for permission, revision or approval of any kind before publication, subject to the restrictions and responsibilities established by law."1 It was simply another reflection of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen," which the General Constituent Assembly of France had consecrated in 1789 and which stated in its sections 10 and 11: "No one may be harassed for his opinions, including religious ones, as long as their expression does not conflict with public order. The free expression of thought and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. All citizens may, in consequence, speak, write, and publish freely, subject to their responsibility for the abuse that they might make of that freedom, in the cases determined by law."2
The year the Constitution of Cadiz became effective, the Cuban Joaquín Infante prepared a political code for his country which, under the influence of the independence of the United States, Haiti and the greater part of the former colonies of Spain, stated in its Article 90: "Opinions shall be free, as shall the press."3 In 1851, Narciso López, shortly before being executed in Havana for unsuccessful separatist efforts, proclaimed that he hoped in Article 14 of the Constitution his "free and independent Republic" would have "freedom of speech and the press...recognized and sanctioned, without any limitation other than the rights of others and public security."4 Seven years later, that article together with others on basic freedomswas included in the "Ave María" Constitution adopted by a New York-based Cuban revolutionary organization of that name.5
The day that the Ten Years War for Cuba's independence began, October 10, 1868, the head of that armed uprising, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, signed a "Manifesto" in which he stated:
...No one is unaware that Spain governs the island of Cuba with a bloodied iron hand...keeping it deprived of all political, civil, and religious freedom.... Cubans cannot speak, they cannot write, they cannot even think.... There have been innumerable times when Spain has offered to respect their rights, but so far they have not kept their word.... The island of Cuba cannot be deprived of the rights that other peoples enjoy, and cannot consent to it being said that it only knows how to suffer.... We demand a religious observance of the undeniable rights of man, by our forming an independent nation.6
And the Fundamental Law of the Republic in Arms of 1897 said in its Article 13: "All Cubans shall have the right to express their ideas freely."7 At the end of the war, when the American occupation came about and under the influence of the U.S. ConstitutionGeneral Leonard Wood stated in Article 10 of the Provisional Constitution of October 20, 1898: "The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the inviolable rights of free man, and all persons can speak, write or print freely on any subject, being responsible for that freedom."8
A very clear expression of the Cuban attitude to the rights of man during the nineteenth century can be found in the teachings and works of José Martí. Martí wrote: "Every time a man is deprived of the right to think I feel a child of mine has been murdered."9 On another occasion, speaking of Bolívar, San Martín and Hidalgo, in his well-known essay, "Three Heroes," he said: "Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy."10 And a year before his death he wrote to General Máximo Gómez, who was to be the chief of the War of Independence of 1895: "Respect for the freedom and ideas of others, of even the most wretched being, is my fanaticism. If I die, or am killed, it will be because of that."11 In 1887, Martí wrote an article on Walt Whitman in which he spoke of the effects of censorship and freedom of expression and thought as follows: "He who lives under an autocratic creed is like an oyster in its shell that sees only the prison that confines it and believes, in the darkness, that it is the world. Freedom gives the oyster wings, and the portentous battle heard inside the shell turns out, in the light of day, to be the natural motion of life-blood in the world's vigorous pulse."12
From the inception of the Republic, in 1902, until the promulgation of the socialist Constitution in 1976, Cuba maintained in all of its constitutional texts the principle of freedom of expression and information, without limiting it by subordinating those freedoms to the judgment of the ruling power. The first Constitution of the Republic, that of 1901, follows the progressive constitutional tradition of the nineteenth century struggles for independence, stating in its Article 25: "All persons shall be able, without being subject to prior censorship, to express their thoughts freely, subject to the responsibility imposed by the law when [they speak or write] against the honor of persons, the social order or public tranquility."13
The Constitution of 1940 was, without a doubt, one of the most positive legal achievements in the history of the Cuban nation because of its progressive nature and the fact that it was formulated with the collaboration of representatives of the most diverse ideologies. This text is more explicit than earlier ones in referring to human rights and, with respect to freedom of expression and freedom of information, its Article 33 places specific limitations on the executive branch in order to prevent abuse of power in matters of expression. It also specifically gives the courts the authority to rule on such matters:
Every person shall be able, without control or prior censorship, to express his thoughts freely in words, writing, or any other graphic or oral means of expression, using for that purpose any or all of the available means of expression.
Only the editions of books, pamphlets, records, movies, newspapers or publications of any nature that attack the honor of persons, the social order or public peace shall be able to be taken out of circulation, after a resolution made by the competent legal authority keeping in mind the responsibilities involved in the criminal act committed.
In the cases to which this article refers, it shall not be possible to seize or hinder the use and enjoyment of the offices, equipment or instruments used by the media entity involved, except in cases involving civil liability.14
Even the "reforms" made in 1928 to the Constitution of 1901 during the government of the dictator Gerardo Machado and the "Statutes" imposed by Fulgencio Batista after the military coup of 1952 included provisions on freedom of expression.
What the Cuban people disliked most about the military coup led by Batista on March 10, 1952, from a legal perspective, was the imposition of the Statutes of April 4 of that year. In a complete break with the Constitution of 1940, the Statutes empowered the Council of Ministers to designate the President of the Republic and to modify the fundamental law. The opposition united around the Constitution of 1940, and when Fidel Castro began the armed revolt on July 26, 1953, he made public statements to the following effect: "The revolution declares that it acknowledges and is based on the ideals of Martí, contained in his speeches, on the postulates of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and on the Manifesto of Montecristi.... The revolution declares its absolute and reverent respect for the Constitution that was given to the people of Cuba in 1940, and reestablishes it as the official code."15 In addition, Fidel Castro's self-defense before the courts that tried him for his attack on the Moncada army barracks was also based on the rights guaranteed in the Constitution of 1940, and his condemnation of the military regime revolved around that same law. Years later, when leading the guerrillas of the Sierra Maestra, he announced a Program-Manifesto enumerating the most popular aspirations of the people, and most of them were contained in the Constitution of 1940. The ten parts of the Program are headed with thoughts of José Martí.16 During the armed stage of the revolution, beginning with Castro's landing in Oriente province in Cuba on December 2,1956, and ending with Batista's flight from the country, Batista kept constitutional guarantees suspended most of the time. As a result, Cubans grew to appreciate more the Constitution of 1940 and to see it as a perfect expression of opposition to the dictatorship.
From his assumption of power on January 1, 1959, until he proclaimed the Fundamental Law of February 7, 1959, Castro amended the Constitution of 1940 on several occasions. As happened with Batista's constitutional Statutes, Castro's Fundamental Law incorporated most of the articles of the 1940 Constitution, but in both cases there were changes in matters of great importance.17 The article on freedom of expression and information remained as it was in the 1940 Constitution.18 On May 8, 1959, Castro justified the arbitrary changes made in the 1940 Constitution as follows:
Where does the Constitution come from? From the people. Who makes the Constitution? The people. And who are the only ones who have the right and power to change the Constitution? The majority. Who has the majority? The revolution. Are they going to come to talk to us of the Constitution, those who came to greet Batista after the 13th of March and to wish him 100 years of life? Those of us who have defended the Constitution can talk of it. It is good to establish here that the Revolutionary Council of Ministers, representative of the immense majority of the people, is the constituent power of the Republic at this time, and that if an article of the Constitution turns out to be inoperative, too old, the Revolutionary Council of Ministers, representative of the immense majority of the people, transforms, modifies, changes or replaces that constitutional precept.19
One year later, he called the Constitution of 1940 "antiquated" and spoke of a "new Constitution," a "socialist Constitution," as something the country needed.20 For the purpose of preparing for a new legal instrument, the magazine Cuba Socialista was founded. During its publication, from September 1961 through February 1967, it was used to disseminate ideas on socialist legality. Its board of directors was made up of Fidel Castro, Osvaldo Dorticós, Blas Roca, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez and Fabio Grobart: the upper level of the revolutionaries and old militants of the Communist Party. Cuba Socialista was initiated at the end of the year of the First Declaration of Havana, a document that enumerated the rights that the Revolution would defend. In the first issue, Castro stated that the magazine was made "fundamentally, for the revolutionary cadres and militants, for those who are interested in developing ideologically and politically," and that its main objectives were "to spread the experiences of the Cuban Revolution, pose and discuss the problems that the Revolution faces in different areas. To examine in the light of the scientific theory of Marxism the different aspects of the struggle waged by the working class with the support of the peasants and the other working classes to reach Socialism." Cuba Socialista became a forum for developing ideas set forth in the Declaration of Havana. Among them was the right of "intellectuals, artists and scientists to struggle with their words for a better world."21
In a speech given by Fidel Castro at the University of Lomonosov on May 21, 1963, he said that Cuba's delay in preparing a constitutional text was due to the fact that it was in the process of reorganizing society and that from that experience would come the legal instrument that was going to govern the nation.22 Twelve years later the people of Cuba were given a draft of the 1976 Constitution which currently governs the country. A full understanding of freedom of expression and information in Cuba requires a review of the evolution of the norms on those freedoms expressed in that Constitution, and the legal and Communist Party texts that prepared the way for it.
At the beginning, the revolutionary government made a series of statements with respect to its objectives and the paths for reaching them that frankly contradicted its actions in the same fields. What happened with the freedoms discussed in this report is just one example. In a television interview on April 2, 1959, Castro stated:
To persecute the Catholic because he is Catholic, to persecute the Protestant because he is Protestant, to persecute the Mason because he is a Mason, to persecute the Rotarian because he is a Rotarian, to persecute La Marina [morning newspaper] because it may be a newspaper with a rightist tendency, or to persecute another because it has a leftist tendency, one because it is radical and of the extreme right and the other of the extreme left, I cannot conceive of, nor will the Revolution.... We are doing what is democratic; respecting all ideas. When one begins by closing a newspaper, no newspaper can feel secure; when one begins to persecute a man for his political ideas, nobody can feel secure.23
Nevertheless, in one way or another, many newspapers were already being threatened or had been closed as a result of protests by officials who objected to the journalists' independent views, denunciations by workers' unions controlled by the government and attacks in the official newspaper, Revolución, or the Communist Party paper, Hoy. In the face of resistance from the uncontrolled press, a form of censorship was introduced. By making use of the influence that the authorities had over the Provincial Association of Journalists of Havana, on December 26, 1959, the members of that group agreed to impose on all periodicals the obligation to include, in the form of clarifications or footnotes, criticisms of editorials or news items that were not in accord with the official government line. The newspapers Información and Diario de la Marina went to the Supreme Court to challenge that violation of the law, but their petition was rejected on procedural grounds. One of the magistrates, Miguel Márquez y de la Cerra, issued a private opinion which said: "In my view the measure taken...with respect to the editorial opinions of newspapers, represents a moral damage...because it is or could be a limitation on the free expression of thought."24 One month later, when the newspaper Avance refused to publish the required clarifications, relying on the freedom of the press provided for in the Fundamental Law, it was taken over violently by a group of employees who were sympathizers of the regime. The police force made no attempt to stop the attack. In fact, Fidel Castro approved of it and attacked the director, and two of the principal editors of Avance felt compelled to leave the country.
The authorities closed or confiscated other publications such as El Crisol Excelsior and El Mundo basing their actions on alleged links between those papers and the Batista regime. Economic strangulation was also used to control the written press: the newspaper El País had to close when its clients, industries and businesses, pressured by official elements, withdrew their advertisements. In view of those campaigns instigated by official or semi-official groups, only two large companies were able to survive: Prensa Libre and Diario de la Marina. On May 10, 1960, a day before a letter with the signatures of 300 workers was to appear in the latter in support of the paper's management, an armed mob occupied its offices and the police refused to provide protection. The following day the Diario, then under the control of Communist and pro-Castro elements, held a celebration of the takeover. There was a symbolic burial, at the University of Havana, of that journal which, in its 128 years of publication, had survived other moments of crisis for freedom of information. The Deputy Director of Prensa Libre, Humberto Medrano, dared to publish an editorial in which he said:
It is painful to see the burial of freedom of thought in a center of culture. It is like seeing the burial of a code in a court of justice. Because what was buried last night on the Hill [the University] was not a single newspaper. Symbolically the freedom to think and say what one thinks was buried.... A sequel to that act has been announced in a comment in the newspaper Revolución. The title of that comment says it all: "Prensa Libre in the footsteps of the Marina." They did not have to say it. Everyone knows it.25
A few days later a group of Communist workers and armed militia broke into the office of Prensa Libre to stop publication of an editorial criticizing the government, and when the director refused to yield to the mob's arbitrary demands, he had to seek asylum in the Embassy of Panama. Bohemia, the magazine with the largest circulation in Latin America, fell under similar circumstances, and its director, who had greatly distinguished himself in the struggle against the Batista dictatorship, had to take refuge in the Embassy of Venezuela.
The same fate befell the radio and television stations. Station CMQ, the most powerful in the country, could not have been criticized for anything other than maintaining an independent stance. An alleged labor dispute was used to justify intervention by the Minister of Labor. With the goal of "consolidating the revolution and guiding the people," an entity called the United Front of Free Broadcasting Stations (FIDEL) was created and managed to bring the remaining radio and television stations under control. In the face of those violations of freedom of expression and information, the Inter-American Press Society, which was meeting at Montego Bay, stated on March 19, 1960: "In Cuba, where a year ago there was joy because the press had once again recovered freedom after the flight of the dictator Batista, that same press is now seen facing seizure, confiscation and collectivization." And a few days later the president of the Society commented, referring to the attitude of the Cuban government with respect to the press: "The campaign has also brought about a state of intimidation and possible danger for the personal safety of the directors, who are publicly denounced by government spokesmen as counterrevolutionaries because they express differing opinions that are not to the liking of those who govern today in Cuba."26 Finally, in order to obstruct the circulation of American newspapers, their bank accounts were frozen. In the end Cubans had access only to government-controlled press and publications from Communist countries.
The Platform of the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party is something of a summary of the Cuban phenomenon from 1959 through 1975. The Preamble of the Platform stated that it would be "the guiding document for all the work of the Party..., its principal ideological instrument and banner of combat" and that it was going to "serve as a basis for the work of the Central Committee." Part 101, called "Tasks of the Ideological Struggle," states the following:
The Party considers as the principal tasks for the Communist education of our people and internal and external ideological confrontation:
The defense of Marxist-Leninist purity; the struggle against the concepts and theories of the bourgeoisie, imperialism and its servants, pointing to the crisis in which they find themselves; the opposition to and confrontation with all manifestations of ideological diversionism through the study of the scientific ideology of the working class and knowledge of the laws of universal development;
Disclosure of the lies in the insidious anti-Soviet campaigns, through clarification of the role of the USSR in the world struggle for social progress and in the creation of more favorable conditions for the struggle of nations for their definitive liberation;
Opposition to the ideas held by the revisionists of the right who deny the class struggle and the leading role of the working class in the Socialist revolution, and proof that they are shameless defenders of the bourgeois order;
The consequent combat against the political and ideological positions of the revisionists of the left, as well as dogmatism and sectarianism; pointing out the anti-Soviet leftist pseudorevolutionaries as actual servants of imperialism and enemies of humanity.27
The press, of course, in the hands of the State, turned into the best weapon for that "ideological struggle." In dealing with the mass media, section 105 of the Platform states:
The Party shall provide systematic orientation for and attention to the instruments of the mass media and shall promote the enthusiastic and creative participation of all workers who base their opinions on the Communists and on the activity of the labor union movement of journalists and writers, so as to succeed in having the radio, television, written press and films carry out more and more effectively their role in the political, ideological, cultural, technical-scientific and aesthetic education of the population.28
As a summary of that First Congress of the Communist Party, Fidel Castro read a Report in which he said the following about radio and television in Cuba:
As a vehicle for spreading the ideas of the bourgeois society in the capitalist stage, the radio had the role of an agent selling commercial products. The dramatized serials, with a deforming content, were used indiscriminately, with their mark of vulgarity and poor taste fostering superstition and a low cultural level.... Television, which came after, adopted the formulas that had proved successful in radio. It used what was in style and sold more, and in order to make more complete the imitation of the American television model, religious conversations. which had great success in the United States, were included.
With the triumph of the Revolution, the stations involved with the tyranny were seized, and the Independent Front of Free Broadcasters was formed. The nationalization process of the radio and television was completed later, and in May of 1962 the Cuban Radio Broadcasting Institute was created and charged with centralizing these media in order to serve the interests of the Revolution.29
The following year, in 1976, the Constitution went into effect. In its Chapter IV it discusses "Fundamental Rights, Obligations and Guarantees." With respect to freedom of information and expression, Article 52 states in a markedly restrictive way:
Freedom of speech and the press, in accordance with the goals of Socialist society, is recognized for citizens. The material conditions for their exercise are guaranteed by the fact that the press, the radio, television, movies and other mass media are state or social property and cannot be the object, in any case, of private property, which insures their use in the exclusive service of the working people and the interest of society.30
Since Article 5 of the Constitution establishes that the Party is the "vanguard of the working class and the leading force of society and the state,"31 Article 52 must mean that freedom of information and expression can only be used for the "exclusive service" of the Communist Party.
Cuban authorities lost no chance to enforce the impression that the socialist constitution was the product of the popular will. Sad though it might be to see a nation limiting its freedom, the document would have legitimacy if, in fact, it had been produced to reflect the people's will. A review of the drafting process from its inception to final approval of the Constitution shows the opposite. The history of that constitutional text begins in 1974, when the Council of Ministers and the Politburo of the Communist Party selected "a small group of comrades" to prepare a draft in accordance with the indications and directives given to them.32 After the draft had been submitted to those groups and approved, it was submitted to "public and popular" discussions in the work and educational centers, in the press, in the assemblies of mass organizations, in official circles, etc. That discussion of the document in public took place so that the Minister of Justice could assert with "rigorous exactness, that each Cuban had been a coauthor of the Socialist Constitution."33
In the Central Report of the First Party Congress, Fidel Castro gave these figures with respect to popular participation:
Around 6,200,000 persons took part in the discussion of the draft.... Five-and-a-half million voted in favor of keeping the draft without modifications, 16,000 persons proposed different modifications and additions that were backed by the votes of more than 600,000 participants in the diverse assemblies. In this way, enriched by popular discussion and perfected by the Preparatory Commission, we have obtained the text on which our Congress will pass judgment, and that will be submitted to a vote next February 15, so that it will be our people, with their free, equal, universal and secret vote who will definitively approve the Constitution.34
But a comparison of the first draft with the one that was finally submitted for vote indicates that the changes are very few and of little importance, and it is to be presumed that most of them came from the review of the document made by the Council of Ministers and the Politburo. The government only publicized the draft as it came out of the "small group of comrades" that prepared it and the final version of the Constitution. Thus, it is not possible to determine the origin of these changes. In all, there are about 30 modifications in meaning, always small ones (e.g., Section b, Art. 29, in describing who were Cuban citizens, originally did not include those born abroad of Cuban parents who were outside the country on official missions; and the first draft of Art. 52, which deals with freedom of information and expression, omitted the movie industry as one of the media controlled by the State), 10 changes to clarify ideas (e.g., in the Preamble, in speaking of the "exploitation by the capitalists," the word "imposed" was added; in Art. 13, which explains conditions for the granting of asylum in Cuba, the word "literary" was added to the section dealing with persecution for "artistic activities"), six deletions to prevent redundancies (e.g., in Art. 38 the word "productive" was deleted in speaking of work; in Art. 12e, on the principles of foreign policy, the word "national" was deleted when "the national sovereignty and independence" were mentioned), 56 grammatical, syntactic or semantic corrections (e.g., in Art. 5, "towards the Communist future" was replaced by "towards a Communist society"; in Art. 116b, "agreements adopted" was changed to "agreements made"), and 20 changes in the ordering of the articles and sections (e.g., Art. 70i of the draft became 80m of the Constitution; Articles 136 and 137 became 137 and 136, respectively).
As always happens in the Communist countries, the Constitution was approved by an impressive majority of the people. Fidel Castro said in his speech of February 17, 1976, that he thought that 90 percent of the votes would have been very high, but that since 97.7 percent of the votes had been favorable, he was afraid that the integrity of the voting would be questioned.35
Like all of the fundamental rights dealt with in the Constitution of 1976, freedom of information and expression are limited by Article 61, which states:
None of the freedoms which are recognized for citizens may be exercised contrary to what is established in the Constitution and the law, or contrary to the existence and objectives of the socialist state, or contrary to the decision of the Cuban people to build Socialism and Communism. Violation of this principle is punishable by law.36
Article 52 of the Constitution specifically limits freedom of expression; it reads: "Citizens have freedom of speech and of the press in keeping with the objectives of socialist society.... The law regulates the exercise of these freedoms."37
The relevant law in effect when the Constitution entered into force was Article 140.B of the Código de Defensa Social (Code of Social Defense), as amended by Law 1262 in 1974.38 According to that provision, sentences of from three to twelve years' imprisonment were to be imposed for certain conduct related to the exercise of freedom of expression. The relevant conduct was again enumerated in Article 108(1)(b) of the Penal Code, which superseded Article 140. lB in November1979 and almost recodifies it verbatim:
Article 108.(1) There will be a sanction of deprivation of freedom of from one to eight years imposed on anyone who:
(a)incites against the social order, international solidarity or the socialist State by means of oral or written propaganda, or in any other form;
(b) makes, distributes or possesses propaganda of the character mentioned
in the preceding clause.
(2)Anyone who spreads false news or malicious predictions liable to cause alarm or discontent in the population, or public disorder, is subject to a sanction of one to four years imprisonment.
(3)If the mass media are used for the execution of the actions described in the previous paragraphs, the sanction will be deprivation of freedom of from seven to fifteen years.39
There are abundant examples of how the exercise of freedom of expression has been punished in Cuba. The following describes only two: one from before Law 1262 of 1974 and another from the period after the Penal Code took effect. In 1964, members of the Rebel Army, former comrades in arms of Fidel Castro, and other Cubans, rose in arms against the government because they felt that the principles that inspired the struggle against the Batista dictatorship had been betrayed. Newsman José Carreño managed to interview one of the insurgents in Ciénaga de Zapata. Knowing that his report would not be published in Cuba, he sent it abroad under a pseudonym. The authorities imprisoned Carreño, who was tried by a Revolutionary Court and sentenced to eighteen years in jail. Since he refused to accept the "rehabilitation" plans (indoctrination) that exist in Cuban jails, and he refused to wear the uniform for common prisoners, Carreño was naked throughout his imprisonment, and for thirteen years he was not allowed visits from his family. Because of pressure exerted by the International Press Society, Carreño was released after he had served sixteen years of his sentence.40
Amaro Gómez Boix was a newsman who had belonged to the Cuban Broadcasting Institute. For some time he could not get employment because he was believed to be opposed to the regime. With nothing else to do, Gómez Boix dedicated himself to writing against the Communist system at home, without any intention of showing his work to anyone or of sending it abroad. For some reason that it has not been possible to determine, the State Security political police grew suspicious of him and searched his house in July 1978. For forty-five days they kept him incommunicado in the Security cells, and then they locked him up in an asylum for several weeks until his trial was held. Gómez Boix's sentence, which was taken out of Cuba through clandestine channels, states as follows:
Having proved that the accused Amaro Eduardo Gómez Boix, 43 years of age and who is described above, an individual known to be reactionary from his statements and declarations, who several years ago was dismissed from his job as a journalist at the Cuban Broadcasting Institute and for that reason began to write several literary works in which he directed his hatred at our revolution, stating among other things that the Communist ideology is the cause of all the sorrows and sufferings of the Soviet people, that Lenin, Stalin and other Communist leaders are all the same since they are the product of a brutal and despotic system, praises and defends the bourgeois way of life and blames the socialist countries and the Palestinians for the wars in Indochina, Africa, America and the Middle East, has written works a great quantity of which were seized in a search carried out for that purpose in the home of the accused by members of the Department of State Security.... That the facts that are declared to have been proved constitute an offense against the security and stability of the nation...since the accused, through the production of written propaganda, incited against the Socialist Order and International Solidarity.... The accused Amaro Eduardo Gómez Boix is sentenced as a perpetrator of a crime against the security and stability of the Nation to eight years' loss of liberty...41
(Translation from Amnesty International)
The history of freedom of expression in Cuba since 1959 reflects the social and political changes in the country and at times the conflict that those changes gave rise to among writers. The struggle can be simply stated as a conflict between the view of art as the servant of ideology and the view of ideas as the wellspring of art. Those who hold the first view believe that they have found the way to understand and improve the world. From that conviction it follows that art should be based on the new ideology and that the artist should renounce any doubts, since they must be ill-founded. When the writer places ideas at the service of art, on the other hand, he enters an uncertain universe full of possibilities that, in the final analysis, are the very essence of artistic creation. The first conception is that of Marxism-Leninism, of fascism and of all totalitarian regimes. The second is the traditional conception of art, which the Marxists call bourgeois. The history of literature in Cuba has reflected a confrontation between these two positions, their ups and downs, and the definitive imposition of the first. The vicissitudes of the two positions follow the fortunes and adversities of Marxism-Leninism on the one hand, and nationalist and humanist socialism (which characterized the revolution at the beginning) on the other.
With the triumph of Castro came notable activity in the area of culture and literature. If we compare the first period after Batista's defeat with the previous years, we can note a true creative fever. It seemed as if during the dictatorship art had been prohibited and that, with the disappearance of that prohibition, it was necessary to make up for lost time. A review of publications between 1958 and 1960 reveals a marked increase in the number of volumes published. For example, during the last year under Batista, between reprints and new novels, we find some ten; in the first year under Castro there is double that, and in the second year, triple. In 1958 there were no publications of dramatic pieces, and in the following two years there were more than twenty editions (new works and reprints). And the results in poetry were similar: in the first year of the revolution, the number of collections doubled, and in 1960 there were three times more than in 1958. What was remarkable about the new output was not only the size of the editions but also the great desire to publish the best of universal literature: in the novel for example, a range of books from Don Quixote to Days and Nights of Konstantin Simonov; from Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, to Dona Barbara, by Rómulo Gallegos; and in the theater, from Anouilh, Chekhov, Brecht and Miller, to the Cubans, Virgilio Piñera, Carlos Felipe, Marcelo Salinas and José Perez Cid.42
One of the most important events from the literary point of view was the First Festival of the Cuban Book, in 1959, which was organized under the direction of Alejo Carpentier. Some editions were published for the event in quantities of a quarter of a million copies. So, for example, there was wide circulation of Cecilia Valdés, by Cirilo Villaverde, El Pensamiento Vivo de Varona, Tradiciones Cubanas, by Álvaro de la Iglesia, an anthology by Nicholas Guillén, another of short stories and of poetry, selected by Salvador Bueno and Cintio Viter, respectively, and a reprint of El Reino de Este Mundo (Mexico, 1949), by Alejo Carpentier.
In that same year, the first contest of the Casa de las Américas was announced. Prizes of 1,000 pesos were offered for the winners in poetry, theater, the novel, short story and the essay. But more interesting from today's perspective is the choice of judges for the contest: Carpentier, Guillén, Jorge Mañach, Lino Novás Calvo and Enrique Labrador Ruiz. Before the year ended, Mañach and Novás Calvo would be in exile, and later Labrador Ruiz. The times were similarly reflected in the publication of certain "Declarations of Cuban Writers." These declarations were motivated by armed attacks against the government. They were endorsed by Marxist writers and by others who would soon convert to Marxism, as well as by many who would be its victims, silenced by censorship or forced to emigrate: in the former group were Carpentier, Juan Marinello, Guillén, Roberto Fernández Retamar, José Antonio Portuondo, Eliseo Diego, Marta Aguirre, Manuel Navarro Luna, Graziella Pogolotti, Lisandro Otero, etc.; and in the latter group were Ángel Gaztelu, Virgilio Piñera, José Lezama Lima, Lino Novás Calvo, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Jorge Mañach, Luis Aguilar León, Heberto Padilla, César Leante, Lorenzo García Vega, Severo Sarduy, etc.43
The struggle between the two groups began not long after the consolidation of the revolutionary government. One group was headed by the old guard Communists; the other was led by figures who had emerged from the 26th of July Movement and were closer to the nationalist spirit that characterized the guerrilla stage in the Sierra Maestra. In the literary field the two positions were taken by the newspapers Hoy and Revolución. The latter attacked the native Marxists, accusing them of dependence on Moscow and of having collaborated with the Batista tyranny. It published a weekly review of literature called Lunes de Revolución (that of the Communists was called Hoy, Domingo), which sought to inform Cuban readers of currents in philosophy and literature without coloring the reports with partisanship. In an article entitled "A Position," in the first number of Lunes, its editors said:
Until now all the means of expression had turned out to have too short a life, to be too compromised, too identified.... Now the Revolution has broken all barriers and has permitted the intellectual, the artist, the writer, to become integrated in national life, from which they were alienated.... We do not have a definite political philosophy, although we do not reject certain systems of approaching reality and when we talk of systems we refer, e.g., to the materialistic dialectic or psychoanalysis or existentialism. However, we believe that literature and art of course must approach life more, and approaching life more is, for us, also coming closer to the political, social and economic phenomena of the society in which we live.44
In an effort to ensure protection from the Soviet Union, Castro, who had broken relations with the United States at the beginning of 1961, stated in April of that year that the Cuban revolution was socialist. The Cuban Communists, who were the best link with Russia, could not permit a country that had declared itself to be Marxist-Leninist to continue to have as an official newspaper an eclectic publication that included writings of Pasternak, Joyce, Camus, Hemingway, Mao and Trotsky, together with writings by Marx and Lenin, and speeches of Castro and Ernesto Guevara. Thus, the Communists most connected with the cultural activity of the country, José Antonio Portuondo and Edith García Buchaca, director of the National Council of Culture, supported by Alfredo Guevara, decided to put an end to the situation. The excuse they found was an event of little importance in itself: A brother of the then director of Lunes de Revolución had produced a short documentary on night life in Havana in certain zones in which "Bohemians" gathered. Although the film, P. M., was not very objectionable from a strictly revolutionary point of view, it was a manifestation of a bourgeois art that could not be tolerated if an effort was to be made to construct a socialist society. The incident led to "Conversations" at the National Library. Under the direction of Edith García Buchaca, a sort of tribunal was formed to hear the views of numerous writers and artists and especially those who were working for the newspaper Revolución. Also present were high officials of the government, such as President Osvaldo Dorticós and the minister of education, Armando Hart. There were foreshadowings there of what would later bring terror to the intellectuals: the self-accusation of the surrealist poet José A. Baragaño, for his bourgeois training in Paris and his friendship with André Breton; the denouncement of fellow writers by Luis Amado Blanco; and the complaint of Virgilio Piñera about the fear that writers felt over harassment by government officials.
Fidel Castro ended the act with the speech known as "Words to Intellectuals,"45 which constitutes the first watershed in the history of freedom of expression in the Castro period. Frequently cited by defenders of the regime, the speech in reality is an ambiguous statement of contradictory concepts. On the one hand it accepted and defended censorship,46 while, on the other, it mocked "the despotic rule of the Stalinist revolution"47 and suggested great breadth for expression consistent with revolutionary goals.48 The most frequently quoted passage of this speech is the most ambiguous one:
...within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing. Against the Revolution, nothing, because the Revolution also has its rights and the first right of the Revolution is to exist, and against the right of the Revolution to be and exist, nobody.... I believe that this is quite clear. What are the rights of the revolutionary or non-revolutionary writers and artists? Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, no right.49
What was left unsaid was how far the Revolution was reaching, where art began to damage it. Further confusion stemmed from the fact that at the time it was not possible to know what the Revolution was, nor who represented it. As a result, neither of the two groups referred to above was satisfied. Lunes de Revolución was suspended because of an alleged lack of newsprint, and the showing of P. M. was prohibited. In addition, those who had provoked the Marxists were dispersed in diplomatic posts and other activities. But the Marxists were not satisfied because the other faction had not been punished.
In August of 1961, at the First National Congress of Writers and Artists, Marxist orthodoxy began to be imposed within the entity that was going to control all literary activity. The principal voice there was that of José Antonio Portuondo, who announced what the future of letters in Cuba would be. In his "testimony" before the Congress and in his "Final Report" he espoused artistic freedom as a principle but warned that, since the very development of the revolutionary process would change the tastes of the readers, so too would the creative act have to change. Until that moment arrived, he recommended:
...nationalizing the egotistical ivory towers, sending the artists to the countryside. It is not necessary to abolish the scholarships for studying abroad, but rather to send to the interior first the most gifted artists and send them later to discover the world with an integrally formed national conscience. As in the case of the youths destined for Foreign Service and to be teachers, let no artist leave the country on a scholarship without first having climbed the Turquino five times.50
In other words, from then on government assistance would depend on the militancy of the artist. In the Report that concluded the Congress, Portuondo stated:
What is important is that the artist, creator, or critic, assimilate, make into his own flesh and blood the experiences of this new era in which we are living. That he deeply assimilate the new conception of reality; that he study and work; that he identify with his people, and that he then express this new spirit in ways that cannot be given him ahead of time, like a set square, and that cannot be imposed on him by decree, but rather that he has to discover; he has to create art and literature.51
A related development was the founding of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, under the presidency of Nicolas Guillén. The artist's freedom was increasingly limited by official control of taste as well as access to publishing houses. The presses were in the hands of the government, and the writers received salaries from the official entities, so if they did not adjust to the preferences of the authorities they could not see their works published.
If the government of Cuba had not had difficulties with the Soviet Union, artistic production might not have been affected as much as it was. But international events were going to break the balance between the new revolutionaries and the old Communists. In fact, there still remained some rebels on the government rolls: Cabrera Infante, Chargé d'Affaires in Brussels; Heberto Padilla, correspondent in Prague; Juan Arcocha, in Moscow. But in October 1962, when the Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba without consulting Castro, the anger in Cuban government circles spilled over into a degree of tolerance for freedom of expression. Again, conflicts centered around the newspaper Revolución. In order to mend the differences between Cuba and Russia, Castro was received with great honors by Khrushchev and, to show his independence, Castro did not have himself accompanied by Cuban Communists. In the face of that official attitude, the novelist Juan Arcocha, correspondent for the newspaper Revolución in Moscow, began to send to Havana a series of writings that the Communists considered offensive to the Soviet Union. Castro reprimanded the director of the newspaper, Carlos Franqui, and Arcocha.
A new confrontation came about because of another film, and the pages of Revolución and Hoy waged the battle. After the failure of movies imported from socialist countries, the showing of Spanish, Mexican, Japanese and Italian films was permitted. They had little to do with the building of socialism. To show La Dolce Vita, by Fellini, was a sort of Castroite heresy against Marxist dogma in that La Dolce Vita was inadmissible in a society in the process of building Communism. With the same spirit that it had shown in 1959 and 1960, the newspaper Revolución made fun of the censors, who this time did not succeed in banning the film.
During the five following years, both factions won victories: freedom of expression gained a few points, but so did censorship. On the one hand, in 1965 Che Guevara attacked the dogmatism of the cultural authorities, who preferred socialist realism. Speaking of the countries that had arrived at socialism, but with a clear allusion to Cuba, he said:
General culture thus turned into a taboo and the height of cultural aspiration was declared to be a formally exact representation of nature, this then turning into a mechanical representation of the social reality that an effort was being made to show, the ideal society, almost without conflicts or contradictions, which an effort was being made to create.52
And with respect to socialist realism, the same document asked:
Why try to seek in the frozen forms of Socialist realism the only valid recipe? "Freedom" cannot oppose Socialist realism because the former does not exist yet; it will not exist until the complete development of the new society is reached; but do not try to criticize all forms of art after the first half of the 19th Century from the pontifical throne of realism at all costs, since that would mean falling into the mistake of returning to the past, putting a straight jacket on the artistic expression of the man who is born and built today.53
But in that same year a group of independent young writers meeting under the name "El puente" (The Bridge) was dissolved for writing hermetic poetry and living a "dissolute and negative" life, according to official standards. In the same year, the poet Allen Ginsberg was expelled from Havana. A Cuban poet, José Mario, was arrested for his friendship with Ginsberg, and later exiled from Cuba. In Paris he told reporters from Mundo Nuevo about the questioning to which the authorities had subjected him:
Finally I was interrogated by six men. They made me walk from one side to another and they insulted me. They said that it did not matter to them that I was a writer, nor that I had studied in the university; that they could clean their...with that; that all writers were gay and they were going to put an end to the UNEAC [Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba] and all places like those; that I had let myself become corrupt and they were going to make a man of me, without little verses or any of that garbage; that literature was something for the lazy and effeminate that the revolution could not allow.54
The victories were split the following year, too. On the one hand, the Union of Writers censured Pablo Neruda for having visited the United States. On the other, Fidel Castro disregarded angry protests by Cuban Communists and personally authorized the publication of Paradiso, by José Lezama Lima, a decadent and perverse work in the eyes of Marxist critics because of its morose descriptions of acts of sodomy. The triumph was minor, however, because the edition was very limited by standards prevailing in those days: only 4,000 copies were printed as compared with the edition of 90,000 copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel by Gabriel García Márquez, a good friend of the regime.55
The greatest victory for freedom of expression in Cuba in those years came when Carlos Franqui managed to move the Salón de Mayo from Paris to Havana. The Salon was an exhibition of the most avant-garde European painting and sculpture at the time, a veritable showcase for the "intellectual colonialism" that the Communists are wont to criticize. Many intellectuals were invited to Havana for the event with the thought that they would remain for the important Cultural Congress scheduled to be held shortly afterwards. It was evident that the staging of the exhibit in Havana by the Cuban authorities was meant to annoy the Soviet Union, or at least its representatives in Cuba, and to win friends in the intellectual community in Europe and America.
In these years of heresy and some tolerance with respect to artistic creation, Cuban literature, notable particularly in the narrative, thrived. The greatest activity occurred during a three-year period beginning in 1966, and was especially notable in 1967, when production in the novel tripled. Meanwhile, in the political arena, Cuba increased its guerrilla activity in Latin America, in defiance of policy set down in Moscow and by Latin American Communist parties. In addition, Castro censured the Soviet Union for its conservative approach towards proletarian internationalism and challenged its principles for the construction of socialism, defending the thesis that socialism and Communism could be created simultaneously.
The high point of the Cuban novel coincided with the greatest successes in Latin American narrative in general: in 1967 the following novels were published: La Casa Verde (The Green House) by Mario Vargas Llosa, Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) by García Márquez, Cambio de Piel (Change of Skin) by Carlos Fuentes, and Tres Tristes Tigres (Three Sad Tigers) by the already exiled Cuban novelist Cabrera Infante. Between the publication of Paradiso, in 1966, and that of El Mundo Aluciante, by Reinaldo Arenas, in 1969, three important Cuban novels were published: Pasión de Urbino (Urbino's Passion) by Lisandro Otero, Los Animales Sagrados by Humberto Arenal, and Los Niños Se Despiden (The Children Say Goodbye), by Pablo Armando Fernández. Some of these works openly followed experimental paths in narrative structure and language and thereby clearly distinguished the artistic world to which they belonged from the principles of socialist realism to which the defenders of orthodox Marxism clung.
The general tone of the time was set at a seminar held in preparation for the Cultural Congress scheduled for January 4B11, 1967. President Osvaldo Dorticós characterized government policy as follows:
At a time when the problems of literary and artistic expression lead to polemics, demand definitions and generate confusion, this, the theme of freedom of literary and artistic expression, conceived within a revolutionary spirit, has not been a question of polemics in this meeting at which writers and artists of Cuba have participated.... It is the fact that not even one voice has had to be raised to demand freedom of literary and artistic expression, in spite of the integral incorporation of writers and artists into the revolutionary task.56
Castro's rejection of the orthodox ideas of Marxism-Leninism with respect to artistic creation and freedom of expression was intense. In one of the Resolutions of the Congress there is talk of the "new man, the complete man...who is capable of thinking for himself...without the prejudices inherited from previous ideologies that in some way continue to operate in some areas of Socialist construction."57 But Cuba's attitude had to change under economic pressure from the Soviet Union. When the USSR refused to tolerate the Castro heresy any longer, Castro was forced to retreat. A signal of the obligatory change came on August 23, 1968, when Castro approved the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
The same year was no less critical in literature; two works that criticized the government were awarded prizes in the UNEAC contest of 1968: Fuera del juego, by Heberto Padilla, and Siete contra Tebas by Antón Arrufat. Around the same time Virgilio Piñera's play Dos viejos pánicos was published. Behind its techniques of the theatre of the absurd, it is a work about terror. Other works with a similar questioning attitude published at the same time include Condenados de Condado by Norberto Fuentes, a collection of short stories on a counterrevolutionary insurrection (winner of the Casa de las Américas prize) and books of poetry with signs of complaint such as Las pequeñas historias by Raúl Luis, and Poesía inmediata, by Roberto Branly, echoes of which are heard in volumes published after 1969; Afiche rojo, by Antonio Conte, and Lenguaje de mudos by Delfín Prats, which was withdrawn from circulation immediately after its publication.
The censors were unable to prevent the publication of the award-winning works by Padilla and Arrufat mentioned above. As a result, the later official attacks against these authors had international repercussions. The problem arose when Padilla let it be known that he thought that a novel by Lisandro Otero, a high official of the National Council of Culture, was inferior to Tres Tristes Tigres, a novel by Cabrera Infante, who had gone into exile in London. Cabrera Infante used the occasion to raise serious charges against the government of Cuba for its violations of freedom of expression the first such charges to be heard from an internationally acclaimed writer, and one with first-hand knowledge of the Cuban situation. A magazine published in Buenos Aires in 1968 included the following statements by Cabrera Infante on the persecution of those who expressed interest in his works:
...A European novelist is invited in Havana to a televised panel on Cuban literature, with the express promise not to mention my name....Olga Andreu, librarian, puts my novel on a list of books recommended by that democratic library of the Casa de las Américas, and a few days later is separated from the position and sentenced to a list of surplus people, which means a terrible future because she will no longer be able to work in administrative posts and her only choice is to ask to work as a "volunteer" in agricultural labors....Heberto Padilla writes a eulogy dedicated to Tres Tristes Tigres and. . . in about a week is fired from that official daily paper [Granma]...and, about to travel to Italy to see his book of poems published, his exit permit is abruptly withdrawn, his passport taken away and he is again fired.58
In addition to explaining the subtle operation of Cuban censorship, Cabrera explained in the same article how those who fall out of favor with the regime become non-persons. He wrote of his final trip to Cuba:
...One week after returning I knew that not only could I not write in Cuba, I could not live there either. I only told this to a friend, a type of revolutionary non-person. This is the cycle of the non-person: request for exit from the country; automatic loss of job and eventual search of house and goods; without work there is no work card, without work card there is no ration card...59
Cuban Marxist intellectuals replied. José Antonio Portuondo, writing under the pseudonym Leopoldo Ávila, published his response in five articles which effectively summarize what was to become government policy on freedom of expression in Cuba. In essence, the positions are the same as those announced by Portuondo at the First UNEAC Congress in 1961, where he first suggested the need to make art committed to the revolution. The following is an excerpt from one in that series of articles on writers whom he considered enemies of Cuban culture:
The enemies of our culture are the ones who work with zeal to keep their art far from the circumstances of the people; those who undermine the values of the true works of our art; those who look at the revolution from the castle of their prejudices; those who try to convert the cultural entities into a zone of tolerance of their extravagances...60
Portuondo went on to give the following warning to Cuban writers:
With respect to those who here, inside, relive fantasies and try to frighten and confuse others with their own fears and confusions, or appear as the defenders of culture, we tell them again that that is not the road. The only road possible is that of intellectual honesty which is no longer possible for some to put our shoulders together with those of the people whose efforts lift up the country, not to try to disguise themselves as defenders of culture. Nobody is going to believe or tolerate that patiently. In addition in the future it will not be possible to stamp dirty merchandise with the seal of art, at least not without giving the people the chance to express their opinion against it, and in defense of values that are very dear to them and that they have defended at a high cost: the culture of the nation.61
Official confirmation of that new attitude toward the Cuban writer and artist did not come until the First Congress on Education and Culture, held in Havana in April 1971. As if in preparation for what was going to happen at the Congress, terror tactics against intellectuals increased. First came the imprisonment of Raúl Alonso Olive, an official of the government who had assisted the economist, René Dumont, author of the book Cuba, )es socialista? Shortly afterwards came the arrest of Heberto Padilla, which outraged the very intellectuals who had offered their support to Cuba in 1968 and for whom Castro had had so many words and gestures of gratitude. Padilla had done nothing more than write independently. His book En mi jardín pastan los héroes, written from exile in Spain, relates the details of his arrest and of the torture to which the authorities subjected him in their efforts to extract a confession. The incident is just one example of the violations of freedom of expression in Cuba. According to Padilla, during his interrogation by the Department of State Security, the official in charge of his case told him:
...before declaring war against us, you should have asked yourself if you were afraid of bullets. You are intelligent, we do not mind saying so. But it was necessary to end this situation of the intellectuals in Cuba if we do not want to end up like Czechoslovakia, where the writers are standard-bearers of fascism, like that Russian friend of yours, Yevtushenko, who is an anti-communist and anti-Soviet.62
Padilla's observation in retrospect was as follows:
It was the same reasoning as Raúl Castro's. Years before, in Prague, talking with all those who made up the diplomatic and trade mission of Cuba, in referring to the polemics that had arisen in the USSR with respect to Solzhenitsyn, he had said: "In Cuba, fortunately, there are few intellectuals and those that there are always looking for trouble."63
The interrogation ended with a physical attack on Padilla with a bound copy of his manuscript:
The Security officer took the novel from on top of the desk and began to hit it gently with his hand, and said: "Do you know what the real title of your novel is? Can't you guess? The inconclusive novel, man, where nothing occurs, where nothing can occur, some few papers read in closed circuit and that will end up where they deserve, in the wastebasket, because, of what use is the fragmentary, the incomplete and inconclusive? Fidel does not like this poisonous shit, the leaders don't like it, nor the Party, nor anyone...." And he grabbed the manuscript with a fury until then unknown. But I didn't see, I didn't hear anything more.64
Having recovered from the attack after several days in a hospital, Padilla was taken to a deserted beach where they tried to convince him to make a public retraction. After a visit from Fidel Castro himself, Padilla was told by the State Security agents:
We can destroy you. We can destroy you although you know that legally we have no ground whatsoever. You have not done anything, you have not hidden bombs, nor have you committed any sabotage, nor have you dealt in black market currency; but the Revolution will recognize all of that at the appropriate time and we will have no misgivings about rehabilitating you, but today you represent a very dangerous tendency in the country and it is necessary to destroy it.... So, there is only one course open to you: to come to terms with us.65
The price that Padilla had to pay for them to release him was to make a public retraction and accuse several writers of being counterrevolutionaries: his wife, Belkis Cuza, Lezama Lima, Pablo Armando Fernández, Manuel Díaz Martínez, César López, José Yanes, Norberto Fuentes and David Buzzi.
The third landmark in the history of freedom of expression in Cuba after 1959 was the Congress of Education and Culture of 1971. It marks the official acceptance of Stalinism, which has been practiced in the country since, and which was codified in the Constitution of 1976 and in subsequent legislation. The "Declaration" that was approved at the Congress disregards the pretense with respect to censorship that until then had been maintained to win respect from foreign intellectuals. The document stated:
The revision of the bases for national and international literary contests that our cultural institutions will promote is undeniable, as is our new analysis of the revolutionary status of the members of the juries and the criteria for awarding prizes.
At the same time, it is important to establish a rigorous system for the invitation of foreign writers and intellectuals which will prevent the presence of persons whose works and ideology are in conflict with the interests of the Revolution, specifically with those regarding the training of the new generations, and who have participated in activities of frank ideological diversionism...
The cultural media cannot serve as a framework for the proliferation of false intellectuals who try to convert snobbism, extravagance, homosexuality and other social aberrations into expression of revolutionary art, removed from the masses and the spirit of our Revolution.66
The "Declaration" repeats ideas that had formed part of Cuban Marxist orthodoxy from the inception of the Castro regime:
Our art and our literature will be valuable means for educating our youth in revolutionary morality, which excludes the egotism and aberrations typical of bourgeois culture.
Culture in a collective society is an activity of the masses, not the monopoly of an elite, the adornment of a chosen few.... We are combating any attempt at foreign control in the area of ideas and aesthetics. We do not worship those false values that reflect the structures of the societies that despise our people. We regret the pretensions of the mafia of pseudo-leftist bourgeois intellectuals with respect to becoming the critical conscience of society. The critical conscience of society is the people themselves.67
In his closing speech at the Congress, Fidel Castro himself put an end to controversy on matters of cultural freedom. He described those who were passing judgment on the acts and decisions of the Revolution from abroad as "bourgeois liberals," "agents of cultural colonialism," "shameless pseudo-leftists," "intellectual rats" and "CIA agents," and set down official cultural policy as follows:
For us, a revolutionary people in a revolutionary process, cultural and artistic creations have a value in relation to their usefulness for the people, in relation to what they contribute to man... . Our valuation is political. There can be no aesthetic value without human content.68
Castro then harked back to Marxist orthodoxy and repeated what Portuondo had said years before:
...to receive a prize in a national or international contest, one has to be a true revolutionary, a true writer, a true poet, a true revolutionary. That is clear. And clearer than water.... Only revolutionaries will be acceptable.69
The latest landmark in the history of freedom of expression in Cuba since 1959 was the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, held in 1975, the resolutions of which summarized the experience of previous years and established future policies and the guidelines for legislation. The Resolution on "Artistic Creation" concluded as follows:
Art in socialism presupposes, as a condition for its development, a high ideological and technical quality and the new vision of the world that socialism brings with it; not the servile imitation of the cultural heritage, but rather its revaluation and continuity.... Socialist society requires from art that it contribute to the education of the people through aesthetic enjoyment...
It is necessary to foster and stimulate the systematic study of Marxism-Leninism among writers and artists, to increase the possibility for them to become familiar with and delve deeply into the real problems of the construction of socialism in our country, for them to penetrate the essence of the social phenomena with their creative work, so that they will contribute effectively with their works to socialist construction.70
The same Resolution sets down norms for the creation of socialist realism: themes based on immediate problems addressed from a committed position that will be easy to understand:
Artistic creation should reflect the problems of social and individual life and the tensions inherent in the process. In dealing with such conflicts one does so from the perspective of the proletarian class, with firmness and ideological clarity, with one's energy and total intransigence towards the manifestations of the ideology of the past and with one's defense of the interests of the people.71
The Resolution on Artistic and Literary Creation explicitly denies the right to freedom of expression and information, since it prohibits the dissemination of ideas that conflict with socialism and promises support only for art that embodies official dogma:
The First Congress of our Party feels that the Revolution...has the duty to reject any effort to use the work of art as an instrument or pretext for spreading or legitimizing ideological positions adverse to socialism.... Our Party...fosters art and literature in which the socialist humanism that is at the heart of our Revolution is present as an encouraging support.72
As was to be expected, the resolutions adopted in the Party platform were embodied with the same spirit in the Constitution of 1976. Although more condensed, they, too, express limits on freedom of expression. Part (d) of Article 38 states: "Artistic creation is free whenever its content is not contrary to the Revolution. Forms of expression in art are free."73 But, in fact, because of the political and propaganda value that is expected in art, as was made clear in the Party platform, even that freedom in artistic form is subject to the obligation to create a functional art that will serve the interests of the government. In addition, that formal freedom, like all the others enumerated in the Constitution, is limited by Article 61, which was earlier cited in reference to freedom of information. Article 61 makes it clear that "none of the freedoms recognized for citizens may be exercised against what is established in the Constitution and the laws, nor against the existence and ends of the Socialist State, nor against the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and Communism."
Since the adoption of the Constitution, Cuban government policy with respect to freedom of expression and information has been kept within those precepts. At the Second Congress of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba at the end of 1977, the resolution on the Draft Regulations of the Literature Section suggested that the function of that group was to "foster the creation and dissemination of literature that through its ideological content and aesthetic quality contributes to the education and spiritual enrichment of the people. As a result, literature, like all artistic activity, demands a study of Marxism-Leninism so that the creative work produced by the trained artist will reflect social problems 'with the greatest depth.'"74 In the closing speech at this last UNEAC Congress, the Cuban minister of culture stated that the principles set forth in the First Party Congress Platform and in the Constitution with respect to artistic activities were going to have validity "for a long historic period."75 Thus in 1980 the deliberations of the Second Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba on freedom of information and expression revealed no substantive policy change. The only development noted was the need to "use the media of cultural information, diffusion and promotion in a more and more effective way to facilitate an active and enriching presence of art in material production, given the economic constraints at the time."76
Any study of human rights in Cuba based solely on written law must necessarily give an incomplete picture of reality. In practice, the legal system in Cuba is based on Communist Party dictates since, according to the Constitution, the Party is "the supreme guiding force of society and the State."77 Therefore, this report on freedom of expression and information must include testimony from those who have witnessed the regulation of cultural life in Cuba. Of the statements made by writers who have recently left the country, two are offered here as examples: Reinaldo Arenas, a young novelist persecuted in Cuba for "ideological diversionism" and sentenced arbitrarily to a year in prison, and César Leante, author of eight books that have been translated into several languages, once national advisor of the Ministry of Culture, who defected in Madrid at the end of 1981 when he was going from Havana to Bulgaria to represent the government of Cuba. At a recent Congress of Dissident Cuban Intellectuals held at Columbia University, Arenas described with these words the situation of intellectuals on the island:
Everyone insulted, abused; everyone censured; everyone "confessed"; since if there is something that a person in a Communist country cannot go without, it is confession. One must confess and "receive communion" at the police station, at the place of work, on the block, or, if we are more stubborn, in the dark solitary confinement cell where not even the babbling and crackling of the "progressive" writers of the West will resolve anything. We confess not only what we have done, but also what the State indicates that we should confess. And what a way of indicating, convincing!...in a minuscule, hermetically sealed booth, with boiling solutions frozen now; with blows, now in the stomach, now in the face; with kicks, now in the head, now in the back. After these tactics and other more effective ones, how are we not to confess our guilt, counter-revolutionaries, traitors, how are we not to accuse ourselves, inform on ourselves? Some of us go to prison for a year, as was my case; others, for three, like Daniel Fernández; others, for eight, like René Ariza; others, for thirty, like Miguel Sales; others are shot, like Nelson Rodríguez. And others are put in front of a movie camera and are coerced into making their confessions public. And of course, they are also shot, because after having served a year or thirty we are in any case liquidated. But it is not a matter of serving a sentence, it is a matter of ever after being a sentenced person, a walking corpse, a zombi who must naturally show his love of the Maximum Leader incessantly.78
Arenas went on to explain the workings of Cuban censorship thus:
It would be almost naive to analyze the repression only in terms of the people the system has decided to sentence to prison or shoot. More subtle, more sinister, more immoral, more impossible to verify and more terrible, is the repression of silence, of compulsion, of threats, of daily extortions, the unceasing official menace, the fear unleashed through the perfect mechanisms that make of man not only a repressed person, but also a self-repressed one, not only a censored person, but a self-censored one, not only one watched over, but one who watches over himself, since he knowsthe system has taken it upon itself to let him knowthat the censorship, the vigilance, the repression, are not simple psychological manias or fantasies of persecution, but rather sinister apparatuses, ready to silently strike us without the free world (the other doesn't count here) even managing to know for certain what happened to us.79
César Leante has explained his decision not to return to Cuba and thus to renounce the privileges that he had enjoyed because of his high post in the Ministry of Culture in Havana. In an interview that was published by the press of several countries, Leante stated:
...It was unbearable to continue in that country. There is the ghost of censorship, first in its interior stage: self-censorship, which consists of assuming the fallacy that any criticism of the system is a way of helping the enemy, and, therefore, that temptation must be repressed. Then comes the exterior censorship, plain and simple, from a reader who, out of fear, is ill intentioned, almost superstitious and ends up seeing criticism where it does not exist. Not even a literature that is generally accepting [of the regime] is permitted. It has to be totally accepting.... All intellectuals in Communist society must be totally integrated, since the intellectual is considered an "ideological cadre," or in other words, a structural part of the system. This is true not only with respect to writers. It is true with respect to professors, artists, newsmen, all those in contact with the media.80
And with respect to literary production in Cuba, he added:
This oppressive atmosphere has inevitably resulted in the asphyxiation of literature itself.. . . This does not mean that the Revolution is hindering literary production in a quantitative sense. Today more books are being published, but only those which suit the government, and this suitability is measured by zealous officials specialized in detecting shadows in the midst of the radiant unconditionality that is expected from everyone.81
The punishments that Leante suffered and that are currently being suffered by writers imprisoned in Cuba are additional evidence of the lack of freedom of expression and information in the country. Armando Valladares, the invalid poet who spent twenty-two years in jail, whose release was finally obtained through the intervention of President François Mitterrand, has revealed the extremes to which the Cuban authorities go in order to prevent the publication abroad of dissident literature. In statements made in a French television interview, he said:
They did not respect the old age of my mother and took her out of her house to make statements against me. And they even forced her to write a letter saying that everything they were doing against me was just. If she did not do so they said that they would throw my sister in jail.82
And during the same interview the poet's mother herself said that during her last four years in Havana, she, her daughter and the daughter's husband were harassed by government agents who forced them to grant interviews to Spanish and Mexican writers in which they were required to declare their solidarity with the Cuban government and denounce Valladares's rebelliousness. She added, "They told all the neighborhood not to visit us because we were Valladares's family. Security officials took us to several interrogations. Every time some document on his books and poetry appeared, they would come to the house and accuse us of having conspired."83
Two Marxist Dissidents: Case Studies
Ariel Hidalgo
Castroism is more concerned today with dissidence among Cuban Marxists than it is with dissidence among other groups. This is so because some socialists and Marxist theoreticians have begun to analyze Cuban reality using the tools of historical materialism and they have come to the conclusion that what exists in Cuba is not true socialism but rather a totalitarian state burdened by a vast bureaucracy that has brought the economy to a standstill and has suffocated the interests of the working class.
Ariel Hidalgo is serving an eight-year term in Combinado del Este prison, Havana, for possession of "enemy propaganda." Under Cuba's Penal Code anyone who "writes, distributes or possesses" anything that "incites against social order, internal solidarity or the socialist State" is subject to that maximum sanction.84 Many of the regime's past and present political prisoners have been sentenced under the same provision. The authorities see any deviation from dogma as subversive, whether it stems from religious beliefs or atheist materialism. Hidalgo spent the first fourteen months of his incarceration in solitary confinement and is still being kept incommunicado and denied the right of correspondence.
Hidalgo comes from a family of revolutionaries, and some of his relatives enjoy the privileges of power in Cuba today. The following is a biographical note published in one of his books, Origins of the Workers' Movement and Socialist Thought in Cuba (1976):
Ariel Hidalgo, born March 29, 1945 in Antilla, province of Oriente, where he lived until 1959, when he moved to Havana. In 1960 he began his undergraduate studies, which he abandoned to begin studying music theory and to train to become a secretary. In 1972 he published an article, "The First Cuban Socialist," in El Caimán Barbudo. Other historical investigative works followed. some of which form part of this volume. Furthermore, he has published material in the journals Oclae, Casa de las Américas and Verde Olivo, and four of his scholarly works have been accepted in national events organized in connection with the Youth Seminar on Martí Studies. Today he is professor of Socioeconomic at the Manolito Aguiar Workers' College, and he is studying for a degree in History at the University of Havana. He is a member of the Saíz Brothers Brigade, the Writers and Artists Union of Cuba, and the Provincial Commission on Martí Youth Seminars."85
Two years before publishing Origins of the Workers' Movement, Hidalgo became known to the Spanish-speaking world with his essay "Martí and Imperialist Neocolonialism," which appeared in Casa de las Américas, and in 1977 he received the "Premio David" for literature in Cuba and another prize from the University of Panama, for an essay on the Central American isthmus. His writings generally follow principles of Marxist historiography; they interpret facts from the perspective of dialectical materialism with emphasis on the economy and class struggle. But for all his orthodoxy and the patterned rigor of his analysis, Hidalgo also wrote about contradictions in the Cuban system. He also seems to have voiced criticism of arbitrary official acts in his classes at the Workers' College.
One day in April of 1979 he opposed an "act of repudiation" against a student who had asked permission to emigrate. (These acts are public humiliations instigated by the authorities.) As a result, he was dismissed from his teaching position and barred from continuing his studies. Like so many other pariahs in Cuba, he had to fall back on construction work, but he continued his studies in the evenings. In 1981 he decided to write an essay on the contradictions of Cuban socialism that has led to the creation of a new exploiting class. He was completing the essay when the State Security police got hold of a copy and arrested him for its possession. Fortunately, the manuscript was saved and through clandestine channels reached his sister, Giselda, in New York.
"The State," which is the title of Hidalgo's work, begins with an exposition of Marxist ideas on class exploitation in society, of the "machine destined for the exploitation of one class by another," in Lenin's words. Applying the theory to Cuban reality, Hidalgo finds that the State "elects its functionaries in the name of the proletariat," and these very same functionaries, "in their way, in the name of the State, control the means of production." If the workers had true political power, Hidalgo concludes, all would go well, but it is the Communist Party that controls the country, and according to a 1978 study cited by Hidalgo, since 95 percent of Party members are State administrators, there is a "managerial ruling class" in Cuba. On the other hand, the "Poder Popular" (Popular Power), which otherwise might guarantee a workers' democracy, is in fact impotent against the controlling bureaucracya new class totally divorced from the interests of the proletariat. Workers' Assemblies similarly are useless because they have become a mere democratic facade, formal rituals devoid of substance. Hidalgo ends his analysis noting that ownership of industry by the people is "a mere sophism, and workers' control of the State a mere slogan."
For the young Marxist historian, the power that the managers have acquired in Cuba is today more powerful than that of the State itself. The State can remove functionaries from office, but it cannot move against the class that today is formed by the managers and administrators. According to Hidalgo, "Frankenstein, the State, has created a monster that it can no longer control." "Socialism has become a sociolismo" (from the Spanish socio, colloquial for "buddy") in which the privileged wheel and deal with the goods they manage. He cites this example: "Manager A, from a construction company, goes to manager B, from a beverage company, and asks that he 'fix him up with' ten cases of a certain beverage. B delivers the cases, which represent part of the company's surplus production. For A those cases have a use value, but for B they have an exchange value, for he knows that later on he will be able to acquire one thousand construction blocks for a weekend home, a product that A also 'fixes' with part of the company's surplus." Hidalgo recalls that Marx himself warned that "man's exploitation by man is not always tied to private property."
Regarding this reality, Hidalgo goes on to say:
The people, above all the youth, see an ever greater separation between a socialist theory that proclaims the equality of classes and well-being and a reality increasingly plagued by economic penuries and social inequality.... The administrators of all important businesses and enterprises in Cuba enjoy privileges that the working class is denied. How does one explain the existence of the lavish homes of these functionaries with their luxurious furnishings, their pantries bulging with many foods, their yachts, automobiles and sumptuous parties, while the majority of the workers must resign themselves to coping with deprivation under the guise of "proletarian austerity"? Foreign delegations are shown model schools and hospitals which are generally utilized by the families of the upper echelon; for every one of those centers there exist dozens more in wretched conditions which are utilized primarily by the children of the workers.
It is "in the face of this panorama," comments Hidalgo, that the worker produces less and increases the cost of production, because the manager "robs what is supposedly earmarked to be turned into social works."
The enrichment of "managerial rule" has reached such proportions, says the manuscript, that the youth "interpret socialist misery as a result of the failure of the system," which is also seen as "a collective simulation of loyalty owing to the totalitarianism of a State that controls all spheres of the society in the name of the rights of an entire people."
Ariel Hidalgo then goes beyond exposing the injustices of Cuban socialism and the abuses of those who are unlawfully in power or who belong to that powerful bureaucratic class that robs from the worker. He proposes remedies for the problems and prophesies:
In countries where there is managerial rule, the workers, under the leadership of an ideological and revolutionary minority, have to rise up at the sounding of the new herald in order to expropriate the superpower, that exclusive and universal exploiter, the State. To the pusillanimous, to those who believe that every sacrifice is in vain, to those who see human evolution as the vicious cycle of Sisyphus, we say: history does not stop. The Sun of freedom may be eclipsed at each sunset, but it rises all the more radiant with each dawn.
So ends this extraordinary study, perhaps the first written by a Cuban Marxist to reveal to the world the reality of Stalinist totalitarianism in Cuba.
Marx's Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, begins with these words: "A specter haunts Europe, the specter of Communism." One century later, upon seeing the dissensions created by Stalin, the Polish author Edda Werfel, paraphrasing Marx, said: "A specter haunts Europe, the specter of humane socialism." The horrors of Stalin had moved the world, and many politicians and intellectuals of the left realized that "Marxist-Leninism" was no more than a doctrine composed of ideas of Marx and Lenin and invented to impose the will of a minority that led the Soviet State. What claimed to be "democratic centralism" had become a kind of bureaucratic centralism in which an elite acted as the great all-powerful national conscience that rules the great proletarian masses. The hopes for a direct democracy that would resolve the political and economic problems of the country had disappeared, and there was no evidence of the gradual disappearance of State monopoly to which an authentic Communist should aspire.
Ricardo Bofill
Dr. Bofill was a member of the Cuban Communist Party and a professor of Marxist philosophy at the University of Havana until his arrest in 1967. His arrest was the result of his association with the so-called Microfaction, a dissident group of Marxist intellectuals and professionals, some in high government positions, who cast doubt on Castro's methods of implanting socialism in Cuba. They tried to disseminate their ideas, which were firmly rooted in Marxist orthodoxy, and as a result they were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms. Speaking at the beginning of 1968 to the Central Committee of the Party, the Chief of the Armed Forces, Raúl Castro, spoke of the "existence of a current of ideological opposition along Party lines, that does not come from enemy ranks but rather from the ranks of the Revolution itself, from people operating from supposedly revolutionary positions." And referring specifically to Professor Bofill and his friends, Raúl Castro added: "This whole resentful group maintained a constant and ill-intended critical position on what the Revolution is accomplishing.... Some of the opinions expressed by Bofill...were of this kind: that the methods used to remove Anibal Escalante from the National Directorship had not been the most proper; that Che had left Cuba because of disagreements with Fidel, and other things similar to these. This Bofill belonged to the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations." Dr. Bofill was sentenced to twelve years in prison.
Another charge against Professor Bofill was possession of papers analyzing the errors that the government was committing in administering the country. The analysis was not intended for any enemy organization but rather was prepared for submission to the embassies of friendly socialist countries in Havana. Although the government of Cuba has sought to give the impression that the criticism voiced by the Microfaction was insignificant, in fact it was that criticism from the Cuban Marxist dissident group that precipitated Soviet pressure on the Castro regime to accept the Kremlin line in political, economic and international matters. Ironically, that sort of heresy within Castroism ended when the members of the Microfaction were sentenced.
Upon finishing five years of his sentence, Bofill was released from prison but was forbidden to practice his profession and required to work in various government enterprises. When the exodus of 120,000 Cubans from the port of Mariel took place in 1980, Bofill was forbidden to leave. The following year he was arrested again, this time for his efforts to emigrate, and he was sentenced to five years in prison. Released after serving two years, he was denied the right to work unless he renounced his desire to leave the country. He refused to agree and was constantly followed and watched. In 1983 the Sorbonne invited him to give a course on the Means of Social Communication in Latin America, but the Cuban government again denied him permission to travel.
Faced with this situation, Professor Bofill decided to tell his story to two French journalists who were visiting the island. The journalists were arrested and expelled from Cuba, and Professor Bofill went to the French Embassy in Havana to ask for political asylum. The Ambassador spoke with Cuba's Vice-President, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, who gave his word that Bofill's case would be resolved and that he would be allowed to leave for France. On that promise, Bofill left the refuge of the French Embassy. He was arrested again only a few days later and soon after was sentenced to twelve years in prison.
Professor Bofill's wife, María Elena, a resident of the United States, has received his denunciation of the Cuban government through clandestine channels. She has asked me to make it public. The following are various paragraphs transcribed from that heretofore unpublished document.
August 1983
The Human Rights Situation in Cuba
Among the basic guaranties spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, perhaps no other fundamental precept is under greater threat in Cuba than the Right to Life. Over the past twenty-five years there have been massive and systematic executions after illegal trials presided over by special tribunals that provide no legal guaranties. As a result, the Right to Life of every citizen is constantly in danger. In fact the country has been under a virtual state of Martíal Law since 1959: anyone can be arrested without a legal trial or hearing, accused of spying for the C.I.A., of terrorism, of assault, or of any other charge fabricated by the Cuban Security Police, without evidence of any kind, or solely on the basis of known 'confessions" obtained by violent means, and then condemned to death by firing squad. Conservative statistics show that many thousand people have been executed in Cuba since Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959, and it must be presumed that many were innocent, and that others had not violated the law in any way that could have justified the death penalty. The innocence of so many of these people would indicate that they did not have, in any case, the possibility of self-defense at proceedings guaranteed by the most elemental rights. Right now there are eleven provincial tribunals imposing the death penalty in Cuba, and in the medieval fortress-like prison of "La Cabana" in Havana, a special security tribunal, dedicated primarily to judging political dissidents and human rights activists is at work. This was the tribunal that, scarcely a few months ago, condemned to death several union activists who had tried to organize a free union, in the style of Poland's "Solidarity." This same body recently condemned to death prominent attorneys and Cuban human rights activists, Doctors José Rendell Soto, Abelardo Triay, Emilio Valdés Arnau, Félix Casuso, and Nicasio Hernández de Armas. At the same trial Doctors Aramís Taboada, Francisco Morúa and Israel Tamayo were sentenced to thirty years in prison.
After the suicide of Cuba's Minister of Justice, Dr. Osvaldo Dorticós, and after the scandal produced by the "attorneys' farce," this judgment was revoked and it was announced to the family and friends of the victims that there has to be a new trial. As part of this policy of systematic executions, several weeks ago three members of the Church of Jehovah's Witnesses were shot to death. They had been responsible for a mimeograph machine that was used for reproducing religious texts. They were accused of printing "propaganda to promote the raising of arms" and condemned to death.
The victims were: Jesus Prieto Suárez, twenty-seven, Minister and Municipal President of the Church; Saúl Rey, circuit missionary; and Efrén Noriegas Barroso, twenty-one, preacher. As of now, Juan Olivera Alberto and two other church members, all condemned to death, are awaiting their executions in the province of Villa Clara, the site of that province's Missionary Circuit of the Church of Jehovah's Witnesses. In the province of Santiago de Cuba, towards the end of May of this year, university student Carlos Alberto Gutiérrez, twenty-three, was accused of terrorism and shot to death. Gutiérrez, the head of a group of university students unhappy with the government, painted anti-Castro signs in the streets of Santiago de Cuba. In Sancti-Spiritus province, eleven farmers were shot and killed at the beginning of March of this year, having been accused of trying to blow up the dam that spans the Zaza River. In reality, these farmers, members of the constantly victimized productive sectors of the country, had organized a protest against the expropriation of their crops and other abuses. Right now there are some forty people on death row for so-called political crimes, in the so-called "pavilion of death" of the Combinado del Este prison in the city of Havana. It should be pointed out that all of the executions are carried out with the subsequent approval of the President of the State Council, or are at least decided by the prevailing legislature...
The most frequently violated articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Cuba are those concerning freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of opinion and expression; as well as the right to receive and transmit information and ideas through any means available to the people. Under the penal cover of "ideological diversionism," "enemy propaganda," "treason," and "espionage," Cuba's repressive forces have behind them twenty-five years of executions and jailings of any and all who dissent from State politics and official dogma and who attempt to make their voices heard in the public arena. Since the removal of President Manuel Urrutia and the trial of Húber Matos in 1959, Cuba began to stifle all political opposition, making use of hoaxes and judicial farces of every kind. Concrete expression of this persistent repression against all whose opinions do not coincide with those of Fidel Castro were the trials of the so-called "Microfaction," which was no more than a movement of thinkers dissenting in matters of the national economy and ideology, international relations and other aspects of national life. The figures in this movement came from every spectrum of national politics, as was also true in the cases of the Commander of the Revolutionary Directorate and ex-Minister of Foreign Trade, Dr. Alberto Mora; the founder of CEPAL and Cuba's ex-Minister of Economics, Dr. Regino Boti; the ex-Dean of the Law School of the University of Havana, Dr. Francisco Carone; the ex-Ambassador from Cuba to the UNESCO, Dr. Martha Frayde; the economist, Julián Alienes Urosa; the ex-Dean of Cuba's College of Journalists and dignitary of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Cuba, Dr. Edualdo Gutiérrez Paula, and many other dissident intellectuals. Just as in the trial of Húber Matos, where accusations of treason and conspiracy were invented, so were the charges of espionage, sectarianism and enemy propaganda made against the "Microfaction..."
The source used for the facts about firing squad victims, prisoners and prisons in Cuba, etc., is a report prepared for the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations by the attorneys Félix Casuso and Emilio Valdés Arnau, who were Magistrates of the Popular Supreme Tribunal of Cuba and are now on trial for espionage. A copy of this report is in the hands of the Secretary General of the United Nations.
In another document smuggled out of prison, Ricardo Bofill writes about the formation of a Cuban Committee for Human Rights, of which he is president, and about Edmigio López Castillo, another victim of the intolerance of the Cuban authorities. What follows is a literal translation of his letter:
Cuban Political Prison
Combinado del Este, May 27/1984
Copy for the International Press
EFE Agency
Appeal to:
Red Cross International; OMS; Pan-American Health Office
Amnesty International
Mr. Felipe Gonzalez, President of the Spanish Government
Mr. François Mitterrand, President of France
Mr. Olaf Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden
The Cuban Committee for Human Rights requests on humanitarian grounds that you take action on behalf of the poet and philologist Edmigio López Castillo, who is currently imprisoned in this facility, having been sentenced for writing poetry critical of the Cuban regime, and whose health is seriously threatened because of an illness that has rendered him almost blind. Licenciate López Castillo has been systematically mistreated, forced to live under subhuman conditions and deprived of medical attention.
In the 1960s López Castillo was a journalist for the newspaper Hoy, in Havana, and later a diplomat in the Soviet Union. In 1968 he belonged to the group of dissidents known as La Microfacción, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. In 1980 he was resentenced while in jail to an additional 8-year term for writing poetry and essays in defense of human rights in Cuba.
Edmigio López Castillo is a prisoner of conscience who is being held in jail by the Cuban Government and his life is in danger. We request urgent action on his behalf.
Ricardo Bofill Pages
President
Cuban Committee for Human Rights
Based on their long history in search of the rights to freedom of expression and information, it is clear that the Cuban people particularly valued these liberties. Never throughout the nation's history not even in its periods of greatest crisis did the Cuban willingly yield to those who would deny him the right to hear the opinions of others and to express his own.
When the revolution triumphed in 1959, it seemed that those freedoms which had been violated by a number of governments in the fifty-seven years of the Republic would finally be honored; in fact, the revolution against the dictatorship of Batista was founded on the winning of these freedoms as one of its objectives. Nevertheless, alleging a variety of reasons, the government of Castro began to control the mass communication mediums until the Cubans were deprived of all information except that provided by the government.
Combined with efforts to suppress freedom of information, a plan was put into effect which was designed to suppress that other freedom which has been the object of this work, freedom of expression. Totalitarian regimes seek to control all types of communication, including that which is expressed through art, not only because they fear criticism, but also because they seek to utilize the mediums of expression to transform society to make its citizens think and accept whatever the authorities stipulate.
On the basis of the information set forth in this report, one can easily conclude that there is neither freedom of information nor freedom of expression in Cuba today, if we understand these freedoms to be those proclaimed in Articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which state: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance"; and that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
