The challenges are to better articulate a national movement and support it. The challenge is to break the Castro regime’s repression of Cubans. To harmonize internal [dissident] and external [dissident] agendas. The challenge we have is to work a bit more with the people and deliver a supportive message. The major challenge for us is to regain solidarity, a consistent and firm position, an approach that the United States government maintained with the Cuban people for years.
Please, do not continue confusing Cuba with the regime. Do not continue prioritizing economics over politics. Cubans need freedom. It’s not enough to be pleased with the economic situation; we need freedom more than we need bread. We need redoubled efforts in international solidarity so that our people can also receive the information they need.
The Castro regime’s skill for disinformation and distortion is incredible. These recent maneuvers permitting travel abroad form part of a dirty, cowardly, and calculated maneuver to polish its image abroad and maintain power.
[In 2013, the Cuban government relaxed longstanding restrictions on international travel for some citizens.]
In Cuba there is a new wave of opposition leadership formed by blacks, Cuban peasants, farmers, and relatively unknown people who are leading resistance in Cuba, in the interior of the country and in the outskirts of Havana.
I am here to advocate on behalf of those who cannot go to an embassy, those who don’t have access to the foreign press, who do not have a [famous] name or do not have relationships or influence. I advocate for those without a voice and for those whose situation has become more difficult.
It is necessary to take the truth to [the Cuban people] because, in order to convince Juan or Pedro who live next door or around the corner to join our ranks, I need to tell them more than the regime is a murderer. I need to take information and awareness to them. It is painful that the world knew that Nelson Mandela served 25 years [in prison] and my people never knew of Mario Chanes de Armas or Eusebio Peñalver.
[Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994-1999. Mario Chanes de Armas (1927 – 2007) was a former confidant of Fidel Castro. He later joined the opposition after witnessing the regime’s authoritarian nature and spent almost 30 years as a political prisoner. Eusebio Peñalver Mazorra (1936 – 2006) was part of an armed anti-Castro movement that was crushed by the regime in 1960. He spent 28 years as a political prisoner.]
It is unfortunate that Cuba’s youth doesn’t know there is forced labor [in their country] or that they believe exiled [people] are mercenaries, as the dictatorship calls them. But in reality the exiles are patriots that love their country. It is necessary for us to take that [message] to Cuba but we have not been able to because, unfortunately, there has been a lack of focus in that area.
There are two basic things that the people and the resistance lack: information and resources. If I were asked to speak on their behalf, I would say that information takes priority. The main way the regime maintains power is [by controlling] information.
That is why we must prioritize community projects and projects that disseminate information. We must take information to the island because as [Jose] Marti said, “Information is power.” As such, the regime’s strategy is to isolate and censure us. The information that circulates in Cuba is what the regime allows, whenever and however it wants.
[Jose Marti (1853 – 1895) is recognized as Cuba’s national hero. Marti was a writer and essayist who advocated for Cuban independence from Spain.]
Jorge Luis García Pérez (better known as “Antúnez”) was born in Placetas, Cuba in 1964. He is the leader of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Resistance Front. The Front is a Cuban civil society organization named for a political prisoner who died while on a hunger strike in 2010.
As an Afro-Cuban, Antúnez experienced the regime’s discrimination against minorities in restricting both educational and career opportunities. Such treatment, along with severe political repression, contributed to his disenchantment with the regime.
Antúnez, inspired by freedom movements in Eastern Europe, became active in the Cuban opposition. In March 1990, he was arrested for publically denouncing the Castro regime and sentenced to five years in prison. Despite his incarceration, Antúnez remained defiant by refusing to wear a prisoner’s uniform and rejecting the government’s re-education programs.
Antúnez also created the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners group in honor of the famous prisoner of conscience who died during a hunger strike in 1972. Through this organization, the prisoners drew inspiration and encouragement to continue their struggle. As a result, Antúnez was subject to solitary confinement, torture, and an extension of his five year sentence. He endured 17 years of prison before being released in 2007.
Antúnez continues advocating for freedom and democracy in Cuba with his wife, Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, leader of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights. His work involves supporting Cuban political prisoners, and expanding political freedoms and civil liberties.
Twitter: @antunezcuba
Cuba, an island nation of 11.4 million people in the northern Caribbean Sea, is a totalitarian state.
Fidel Castro led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the country for 49 years before formally relinquishing power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Raul Castro is the current head of state and First Secretary of the Communist Party, which is recognized by the Cuban Constitution as the only legal political party and “the superior leading force of society and of the state.” Raul Castro has said that he will step down from power at the age of 86 in 2018.
Cuba was a territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War. The United States assumed control of the island until 1902, when the Republic of Cuba became formally independent. A fledgling democracy was established, with the U.S. continuing to play a strong role in Cuban affairs.
In 1952, facing an impending electoral loss, former president Fulgencio Batista staged a successful military coup and overthrew the existing government. While his first term as elected president in the 1940s largely honored progressive politics, universal freedoms, and the Cuban Constitution of 1940, Batista’s return to power in the 1950s was a dictatorship marked by corruption, organized crime and gambling. He held power until 1959 when he was ousted by Fidel Castro’s rebel July 26th Movement.
While promising free elections and democracy, Castro moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1961, Castro had declared Cuba to be a communist nation.
Castro’s communist government nationalized private businesses, lashed out at political opponents, and banned independent civil society. As Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, Cuban-American relations soured, including a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war, after the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, prompting a U.S. naval embargo.
Since the revolution, Cuba has remained a one-party state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the evaporation of Soviet economic support, Cuba loosened some economic policies, became more open to foreign investment, and legalized use of the U.S. dollar. By the late 1990s, Venezuela had become Cuba’s chief patron, thanks to the close relationship between the Castro brothers and Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
The regime continues to exercise authoritarian political control, clamping down on political dissent and mounting defamation campaigns against dissidents, portraying them as malignant U.S. agents. In a massive crackdown in 2003 known as the Black Spring, the government imprisoned 75 of Cuba’s best-known nonviolent dissidents.
The Cuban government does not respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion. The government and the Communist Party control all news media, and the government routinely harasses and detains its critics, particularly those who advocate democracy and respect of human rights. Frequent government actions against dissidents often take the form of attacks by regime-organized mobs. Prison conditions are harsh and often life-threatening, and the courts operate as instruments of the Communist Party rather than conducting fair trials.
Cuba relaxed its travel laws in 2013, allowing some prominent dissidents to leave and return to the country. It continues to experiment with modest economic reforms but remains committed to communist economic orthodoxy.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Cuba was designated as “not free” and is grouped near the bottom of the world’s nations, with severely restricted civil rights and political liberties.
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