THE CUBAN TRAGEDY
May 30, 2005

            Miami. The great tragedy of the Cuba exile community is that, in spite of the huge political, economic and cultural strides it has made in the United States since 1959, it has failed to attain its most cherished goal: removing Fidel Castro from power in Cuba. And their frustration increases with every day that goes by as they realize that the conclusion most likely to take place on the island will be the death of the dictator and not his overthrow by an American invasion or an internal rebellion.

            The recent meeting of some 150 dissidents that took place in Havana—at the so-called “Assembly to Promote Civil Society”—was a bold and meaningful act of defiance against the dictatorship. The meeting began with shouts of “freedom, freedom, freedom.” However the dissidents inside Cuba lack unity—just look at Osvaldo Payá’s criticism of the meeting—and such is the dictatorship’s repressive power that it could throw each and every one of the Assembly participants in jail for years. (Amnesty International has just confirmed that at least 70 prisoners of conscience were being held in Cuba in 2004.)           

            Neither has the United States’ economic embargo against Cuba, first imposed 44 years ago, been able to topple Castro. The Cuban economy has managed to stay afloat very precariously, first with the support of the Soviet Union, and now by reselling Venezuelan oil on the international market.  But Castro’s fall will never be due to a lack of dollars; Cubans in the United States send 460 million dollars a year to their relatives on the island. In addition, European tourists are very happy to bring along euros. There is no doubt that those who go hungry on the island are the nine million average Cubans, not the ruling class.

Although in 2005 it seems incredible that there could still be countries and intellectuals who defend the Cuban dictatorship, pressure from abroad and from international organizations has been utterly ineffective in bringing about even the most minimal democratic reforms on the island. Take the sclerotic OAS as one example.

Any chances of using force against Castro are also disappearing. Those who have attempted to carry out clandestine operations on the island are now relegated to open mic radio programs in South Florida.  And the case of the anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles shows the limits of any assassination attempt.

Posada Carriles was in a Panamanian prison charged with an assassination attempt on Castro in that country in 2000.  In 1985 he escaped from a Venezuelan prison while waiting for an appeal to be filed by the Public Prosecutor, who accused him of having participated in an explosion on a Cubana airlines plane in 1976 in which 73 people were killed.  Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has called him a “murderer and terrorist” and has requested his extradition from the United States.

Posada Carriles, who is currently in jail in the United States for having entered the country illegally, has denied any role in the 1976 attack.  But in an interview with The Miami Herald newspaper, he left open the possibility that he may have helped place a series of bombs in tourist areas of Havana in 1997. “Let’s leave it to history,” he told the paper, when asked about his possible role in the events that led to the death of an Italian tourist. True or not, Posada Carriles (and others like him) are now out of circulation.

The other option of using force against Castro seems unfeasible.  If the United States wanted to invade Cuba, it would have already done so; it is only 90 miles away and excuses for its doing so abound. In fact, former Undersecretary of State John Bolton, labeled Cuba a threat to the United States during a speech he gave in Washington on May 6, 2002. “The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort,” said Bolton, the current nominee for US Ambassador to the United Nations. “Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states.”

But in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and his continuous war on terror, President George W. Bush has made it very clear that Cuba in particular, and Latin American in general, are not high on his list of priorities. In other words, they can start taking down those signs that popped up in Miami following the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq that read “Castro is Next.”

Because of all of this, Castro’s future is looking more and more like that of the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco. In spite of the huge opposition against him, he managed to stay in power until his body gave out.  And this, I believe, is the real tragedy of the Cuban exile community: to be successful at everything, except at what it wants most.

And lastly, a personal observation. This entire matter, although many people may not know it, affects me very personally.  My two children have Cuban ancestry, and I know that in Cuba they would have lived in fear and without freedom.  And I have no choice but to speak of these things from afar; after the articles I wrote in Cuba during Pope John Paul II’s visit, regime officials threatened to deny me another journalist visa.  And they do have either a very thick file or a very good memory: after seven years they have still not forgotten.