Well, in the late eighties and early nineties, we started a public campaign on a bill called the Varela Project. This was in honor of Father Félix Varela y Morales, a Cuban priest, philosopher and politician from the nineteenth century who represented the island when it still had a seat in the Spanish courts, and he was the first one who taught Cubans to think as Cubans instead of as Spaniards that is, to identify themselves as Cubans, as a different and a new people, and so Varela was the inspiration behind it. He was one of the main pillars who influenced us in establishing the Christian Liberation Movement, [The Christian Liberation Movement is a non-violent Cuban dissident organization advocating for democratic reforms that was founded in 1988. Until his death in 2012, it was led by Oswaldo Paya] so we took his name and christened this 5-point bill in his name.
It was a bill that proclaimed Cuban rights, so we wanted to honor the first priest who taught us how to think like Cubans. The Varela Project is a bill that demands the recognition and respect of rights that are not only inalienable for every person as recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or rights that appear in the constitutions and laws of other countries, but also rights and freedoms which are in fact recognized within the Cuban constitution itself. People want freedom, and some Cuban laws recognize every individual’s right to political freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of association, the right to submit themselves to amnesties in case of being political prisoners.
Regardless of whether these rights are later restricted, if the Cuban Constitution recognizes that sovereignty lies in the people and that the power of the State rests on them, then the sovereign people can demand freedom if they so wish, through articles in the Constitution like Article 88, Paragraph G, which clearly states that when more than 10,000 people request any kind of legal initiative with their vote, then they must be listened to and this request must be submitted to a referendum.
The Varela Project asked to change the electoral law; it asked for Cubans’ rights to be recognized in order to manage and establish their own businesses, although this is not a constitutional right. We were asking and we continue to ask for Cubans to have the inalienable right to make decisions about their own lives and to contribute to society from an entrepreneurial point of view with their own companies and their own businesses. And of course, the freedom of expression and the freedom of association, in a process that would generate free elections after 6 months, which would create a new Congress that could vote on a new Constitution.
This is basically what the Varela Project is about and it is what we were focused on in 2003, when we were sent to prison. I want to say something that I consider to be important. For all these years, some people seem to be oblivious to the reason why our arrests took place, why over 75 Cuban members of the opposition and dissidents were arrested and tried in 2003. Even though some outside of Cuba didn’t recognize the work being done with the Varela project, the arrests took place because the Cuban government did take notice at the time that there were over twenty thousand Cubans who had provided their names, signatures, ID numbers, and personal information in support of this request for a referendum, and they also realized that there was a nationwide social network that the opposition movement could use as a national reference for all the provinces in the country, and that this small social base, had it continued to progress the way it was, then right now we would be talking in Cuba and not here. We would be amidst change and in a free society over there.
Regis Iglesias Ramirez is a Cuban political and civil society activist and a former prisoner of conscience. He was born in Havana in 1969.
He became a member of a dissident group, the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), in 1989. The MCL was founded by the late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya, who died under mysterious circumstances in a car accident in 2012. Regis Iglesias Ramirez became the MCL’s spokesman and a member of its Coordination Council in 1996. He was nominated as a candidate to the Cuban Parliament in 1997, but his candidacy, along with those of colleagues from the MCL, was rejected by the regime’s electoral authorities.
He is a member of the National Executive of the Citizens Committee of the Varela Project, a civil society initiative advocating for free elections and improved human rights in Cuba. The Varela Project gathered signatures from Cuban citizens in favor of a plebiscite, as permitted by the Cuban constitution. The communist government refused to call the plebiscite.
In 2003, Regis Iglesias Ramirez was among 75 nonviolent dissidents and activists arrested by the Cuban regime in what became known as the Black Spring. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison for crimes against the state. In 2010, he was released in a deal brokered by the Roman Catholic Church and was sent into exile in Spain, where he remains as a political refugee.
Regis Iglesias Ramirez has published several books of poetry and contributed to various literary anthologies. His articles have appeared in various publications in Spain and elsewhere. Since the mid-1990s, he has been associated with the Independent Press Bureau of Cuba, the New Cuban Press Agency and the Manuel Marquez Sterling Society of Independent Journalists in Cuba.
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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