Well, the opposition movement in Cuba, the opposition movement from within is pretty big. We could say that there are several types but all of them support the same idea. They want to take freedom and democracy to the island but each group tries to follow a certain platform. There are groups which simply react to events and there are others who are in the streets protesting. There are groups devoted to monitoring human rights and making denunciations. There are political parties devoted to creating programs for a transition within the island, right? That is, there are various types of opposition groups.
But let’s look at some examples. The “Cristiano Liberación” (Christian Liberation Movement) group is an organization with many years of experience which created a project that criticized the Cuban Constitution. [Named for a Cuban religious leader, the Varela Project was a civil society initiative in Cuba, centered on a petition drive advocating democratic reforms.] The regime could not imagine that the Cuban citizens were capable of making changes in Cuba. They even brought a proposal to the Cuban parliament asking for a referendum. This is a big step within the opposition. That was the tactic used, which is a tactic that uses logic.
Other groups exist, for example, “Las Damas de Blanco” (Ladies in White). “Las Damas de Blanco” is a national symbol. Initially it was a group of women representing 75 men who were in jail. This group started growing and they simply did the following: they got together in a house, they went to a church, they prayed for the inmates, they dressed in white and had radios in their hands. They walked through the streets of Havana. And this has really been one of the most successful groups within Cuba. Their bravery and success have been extraordinary. Currently there is a representative of “Las Damas de Blanco” in almost every province in Cuba and groups that do the same.
There are other groups, mainly in Havana, in Santiago de Cuba, in the areas of Holguín, which are groups that already belong to parties. But they are not simply groups affiliated to a political party. They are groups within the civil population that are opposing and who want to take to the streets to protest in a public manner. These groups are starting to have some structure. They are not solid yet but they are starting to have structure. And if these groups are violently repressed, the more they are repressed, the more it means that their way of fighting is effective.
There are other groups, we could say a wave of youth, which are new among the opposition. They are a fresh spirit within the opposition composed of bloggers. The Internet in Cuba is very small. This means that the capacity, or the possibility to access the Internet, or to use a computer, or to have access to any media is really scarce. But this group that has increased with time, they are really a strong group that we have to acknowledge because it creates opinion outside of Cuba and not within the island. This group is facing now what the independent journalists of the 90s faced, which is that the people pressure the regime so much, that the regime has been forced to attack it in a public manner through media. It naturally creates curiosity in the people. They ask, “Who are these people?”
These are not the only groups, there are musical groups or other types of groups that exist inside the island and which come from society. There are even religious groups that do not belong to the church or the Catholic Church; they are mainly Protestants openly challenging the government and so the government attacks them too. These groups also attract people so they are also effective within the population. This has forced the regime to try and project an international image, an image of pretended openness, and to make some changes or be open, from an economic point of view. An image that pretends that they allow critics and allow people to have an opinion. But the obstacles are so big that there is really neither economic nor political openness, and society in reality continues to deteriorate, and this generates a state of confusion.
José Luis García Paneque was born in 1965 in Cuba. He studied medicine at the Institute of Medical Sciences of Camaguey. As a doctor, he specialized in plastic surgery.
In 1998, he became active as a dissident, joining the Freedom Press Agency, an alternative journalism project. In 2000, he became the initiative’s director. For his activism, he was removed from his position at the hospital where he worked.
In March 2003, Dr. García was among the 75 dissidents who were arrested in the crackdown known as the Black Spring. He was summarily sentenced to 24 years in prison. He was imprisoned for seven years and four months, two years of which were in solitary confinement. The harsh conditions in prison caused him to lose half of his body weight, posing life-threatening consequences to his health. In 2010, he was released in negotiations brokered by the Roman Catholic Church. As a condition of his release, Dr. García was required to leave Cuba.
Since leaving his homeland, Dr. García has overseen the Freedom Observatory project, which is associated with the Institute of Strategic and International Studies at the Catholic University of Valencia in Spain. He currently lives in Florida.
Follow Dr. García’s blog at http://vocesdeldestierro.wordpress.com/.
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.
See all Cuba videos