Cuba___________________________________________________________________________
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Not Easily Intimidated
A small group of Catholic activists, working for democratic reforms,
persists in its efforts despite the ire of the Castro government.

By Alejandro Bermudez

During the first weeks of 2000, thousands of journalists in the Western hemisphere were focusing their attention on Cuba, but they were missing an important story. In the United States, the media was concentrating on Cuban reaction to the case of little Elian Gonzales, the 6-year-old refugee whose father demanded his return to Cuba after Elian’s mother drowned while attempting to escape with the boy to Florida. In Latin America, reporters were preoccupied with the condition of the Argentine soccer star Diego Armando Maradona, who was in Havana attempting to recover from drug addiction. Meanwhile, out of the range of the journalists’ cameras and tape recorders, the Cuban government had launched a wave of arrests against political dissidents.

Crackdowns on the political opponents of the regime are a frequent occurrence in this Communist country. But the wave of arrests in January had a novel characteristic. The targets were the members of a small but significant group of Catholic activists which is seeking a peaceful transition to democratic rule in Cuba.

Born of Church teachings

The story of political Catholic dissidence in Cuba goes back to the 1985 Concilio Nacional Cubano—Cuban National Council—an event that brought Catholic bishops, priests, and lay people together in Havana for the first time since Castro’s revolution brought him to power in 1958. The purpose of the Council was to lay the groundwork for a new surge of evangelization in the island nation. Although it was essentially a pastoral exercise, and none of the Council’s conclusions made any reference to political involvement, some of the lay people who took part in the event decided that the time had come to express their Catholic beliefs in public action.

One of these men was Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, a young and enthusiastic parishioner of Sacred Heart Church in Old Havana, who decided to create a political organization inspired by Catholic social teachings. The group was dubbed the Movimiento Cristiano Liberacion—Christian Movement for Liberation—and became more commonly known by its initials: MCL. Paya formed the group despite his recognition that the creation of such an organization, which was technically illegal, would attract the hostility of Cuba’s ubiquitous and powerful Committees for the Defense of the Revolution—hostility that would inevitably be focused on himself, his family, and his followers.

The MCL began its work with a simple, attractive goal: to promote a peaceful transition to democratic government in Cuba. But MCL added that democracy should entail not only the free election of political authorities, but also the creation of laws “in accordance with the human dignity all men and women have as children of God.”

As soon as the MCL announced its existence to the world, and applied for inclusion in the International Association of Christian Democratic parties, Paya and other members began to suffer the sort of harassment that is standard treatment for opponents of the Castro regime. They were constantly stopped on the street by police officers asking to see their papers; they experienced new complaints and pressures at their workplaces; they were ordered to pay fines for offenses which they had never committed; they noticed strange disruptions in their telephone service. As the months passed, they began to face more open threats and even occasional arrests and imprisonment for a few days.

None of these efforts intimidated Paya and his colleagues. On the contrary, MCL enjoyed a rich harvest of new members in 1998, when the visit to Cuba by Pope John Paul II produced a wave of religious conversions and a new surge of practice among previously lapsed Catholics. New MCL committees were formed in several Cuban cities and towns; in others, where the police repression had discouraged activists, dormant MCL groups sprang back to life.

At first Paya thought that the new respect shown by the government for the Catholic Church in the wake of the papal visit would benefit his organization as well. But last year, after the Summit of the Americas convened in Havana, he was forced to the painful conclusion that the government saw things very differently.

The crackdown begins

In September 1999 Paya launched a nationwide petition drive, to collect signatures from Cuban citizens calling for a referendum to determine the type of political system the country should have. From the outset, this campaign was an uphill struggle. Since the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution keep a careful eye on every neighborhood, most Cubans were reluctant to sign such a controversial petition.

When the petition drive began, Castro’s political police warned MCL members to stop the campaign. When the dissidents continued, the authorities decided to adopt tougher tactics.

On December 23, five police officers stormed into the home of Carlos Castro Alvarez—a leader of the MCL drive—at 10 pm, and informed him that he was being investigated for a robbery. After several hours of menacing interrogation, Castro Alvarez was jailed, and left for 36 hours without food or water. At the end of that period, a supervising office approached Castro Alvarez and asked, “Did you have a nice supper yesterday?” But now the date was December 25; the officer was making a sarcastic reference to the fact that the dissident was still hungry in his jail cell on Christmas Eve.

On December 26, Castro Alvarez was released—without facing charges, and without receiving any official explanation for what had happened to him. Oswaldo Paya Sardinas issued a strong public statement, informing the press about the case, and disclosing that other MCL members had also been harassed and detained on Christmas Eve. It was clear that the government was trying to make a point.

Still, the campaign to collect signatures did not stop. Instead Paya invited the leaders of other independent political organizations to a summit meeting, aimed at uniting the forces of those who were working for a transition to democratic rule. But 48 hours before that meeting was scheduled to take place, Paya himself was arrested at his home. The police who took him away from his wife and three children offered no explanation of why he was being taken into custody, or where they were taking him.

That same day, 30 other political dissidents were arrested. But only Paya and another influential Catholic leader —Hector Palacios Valdes, the director of the independent Center for Social Studies —were held in jail. (Palacios had previously been imprisoned in January 1996, for accusing the Cuban government of failure to comply with the agreements set forth at the Ibero-American meeting in Chile the previous year. He was one of the political prisoners who was released at the request of Pope John Paul during his historic visit to Cuba.)

Harassment continues

Paya and Palacios were released after two days behind bars. According to Elizardo Sanchez, an outspoken defender of human rights who has himself been a victim of government harassment, their release was the result of vigorous protests by the International Association of Christian Democratic parties; countries such as Chile, with which the Castro government is seeking expanded economic ties, energetically intervened on behalf of the political prisoners.

“We are being prosecuted for committing the ‘crime’ of thinking freely,” said a defiant Paya after he was released. “The regime has made it very clear that they don’t want a new Cuban National Council or anything similar, because they are afraid of free, independent thought.” As if to demonstrate the validity of Paya’s complaints, the police soon burst into the home of the Sigler Amaya family, where an MCL meeting was taking place. Although the meeting had been peaceful and quiet, all of the people present—including women—were beaten, and threatened with worse consequences if they persisted in their political efforts.

Nevertheless, Paya said that he would schedule a new summit meeting among the proponents of democracy in Cuba, seeking to work out a common strategy for peaceful change. “All we want is the right to build a free Cuba in the spirit of our founders—a spirit of faith, principle, and profound respect for human dignity,” he explained.

In February, in an apparent effort to make it difficult to convene such a gathering, the Cuban police put Paya under constant surveillance. He is now constantly followed, quite openly, by four police agents. These agents trail him even when he is on the job, traveling to Havana’s hospitals and health clinics to perform repairs or maintenance work on ultrasound equipment.

From time to time, one of the agents approaches Paya, and advises him: “Behave, stay away from counter-revolutionary activities. Remember your family.” To make that threat more concrete, the government has also assigned three agents to follow Paya’s young children, who are 12, 6, and 3 years old.

“How easy it is to be brave when you follow around children to intimidate them,” Paya says. “But they don’t intimidate me.” He continues: “I have spoken with my wife and the kids, and they are willing to support me in this. We trust in God and we know He will not let us down.”

Alejandro Bermudez writes for ACI-Prensa, a news agency based in Lima, Peru, which covers all of Latin America.

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