Cuban democracy activist Rosa María Payá and Washington Post journalist David E. Hoffman detail the decline of democracy in Latin America and why the cause of freedom in Cuba matters.
Rosa María Payá is a democracy activist and leader of Cuba Decide, an organization devoted to promoting freedom in her native Cuba. David E. Hoffman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The Washington Post and author of Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and His Daring Quest for a Free Cuba.
The pair spoke about the decline in democracy in Latin America with David J. Kramer, the Bush Institute’s Executive Director; Chris Walsh, Deputy Director of Freedom and Democracy at the Bush Institute; and William McKenzie, Senior Editorial Advisor at the Bush Institute. Payá contends that the United States must play a more active role in promoting democratic values in Cuba as well as across Latin America. She also emphasizes how some Cubans — at great risk to themselves — are speaking out against the repressive government that Fidel Castro started more than 60 years ago. Hoffman recalls how her father, the late Cuban democrat Oswaldo Payá, began a movement for freedom even though he had never experienced liberty. Hoffman also explains why a free flow of information is crucial to the cause of independence in Cuba.
Their interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Economist wrote this summer that Latin America shows that democracies can easily decay and that it is a warning for democrats everywhere. Of course, Cuba has been under communist rule for decades. How do you see the major challenges in the region and the impact on Cuba itself?
Payá: The problem now is in large part due to the tolerance that the democracies of our hemisphere have shown towards the Cuban regime. The United States and other democracies and member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) have tolerated it for six decades.
The dictatorship in Cuba has been a crucial factor in the collapse of democracy in Venezuela and Nicaragua and in the instability that we have been suffering in the whole region during the last years. Now the Cuban regime has a very robust intelligence service that is also connected with organized crime in the region. They are the principal advisors and sometimes the implementers of these regimes in the Americas.
We are seeing the consequences for the peace and security of our countries, and not only in Latin America. In the last nine months, around 200,000 Cubans have crossed the southern border of the United States That’s probably only 10% of the two million people who have crossed.
The dictatorship in Cuba has been a crucial factor in the collapse of democracy in Venezuela and Nicaragua and in the instability that we have been suffering in the whole region during the last years.
Rosa María Payá
A big portion of the people also are being forced into exile from dictatorships in Venezuela or Nicaragua or are somehow the product of their coordination and plans. For instance, the fact that Daniel Ortega removed the visa restrictions for Cubans in November is clearly a reckless coordinated operation with the Cuban regime to try to relieve the social unrest on the island but also to put pressure on the United States.
David, let me throw in another element here, one that you know well, and that is the role of Russia and China in the region. What impact have they had on the lack of freedom? Nicaragua, for example, voted against allowing [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to participate in the recent UN General Assembly session via video. I am curious about your thoughts on this.
Hoffman: If you had asked me this 15 or 20 years ago, when China was talking about a peaceful rise and Boris Yeltsin was in charge in Russia, I would’ve said these look like relatively benign and troubled powers. But look where we are today, where the example that they’re setting, especially in Ukraine, is entirely consistent with the ideology that Cuba applies in its own region.
It’s a tired and destructive ideology but democracies around the world are really on their back feet. People say this backslide in democracy is 15-years-old, but I think it’s gotten much worse in the last few years as Russia and China have risen as very aggressive and illiberal examples.
What can be done to help strengthen the democracy movement in Cuba? And what can the United States do to better support the Cuban people in terms of democratic governance, human rights, and freedom of expression?
Payá: That’s a very good question because it requires some reorientation of the direction that we have been seeing. The Cuban people, and I have to say we as a nation, are in another stage of our fight for freedom since July 11 of last year. The world saw the Cuban people massively on the streets, demanding freedom and the end of the dictatorship.
Cubans on the island are taking the highest possible risk to change their lives. Everybody on the island understands that, as do Cubans in the diaspora. We understand that the way out of the misery and repression is getting rid of the dictatorship. That fight for freedom is the one that needs support.
The United States needs to take a leadership role in the international effort that the Cuban people require in their peaceful fight for freedom. There are very specific moves that the government of the United States can do. For instance, the U.S. should make full use of the Magnitsky Act. One of the biggest threats that human right defenders and citizens in general face on the island is the impunity of the regime, the impunity which with they apply violence.
By using the Magnitsky Act to place individual sanctions against [President] Miguel Diaz Canel, the generals in the leadership, the judges and the prosecutors that are part of the chain of repression, including sending teenagers to eight years in jail for filming a protest, the United States could take a specific action that the European Union and member states of the OAS could replicate.
Another concrete action is to stop any kind of recognition or attempt for negotiation or appeasement with the Cuban regime. The U.S. should demand very clearly the liberation of the political prisoners, the end of the repression, and the respect for fundamental freedoms as the first steps toward the democracy that the Cuban people are demanding. Civil society, the opposition, and the platform that I belong to are promoting holding free, fair, and multiparty elections, which haven’t taken place in my country for more than 70 years.
We need to change the system using democratic tools. The Cuban people are demanding human rights and to be able to transit towards democracy. Those efforts require international pressure, like the kind of international pressure that led South Africa to end apartheid.
We hope that the government of the United States encourages the companies that do business with the Cuban regime to embrace the Sullivan Principles. The United States could also help to have free and uncensored internet access. That access could not be done overnight, but it would help Cubans be connected and informed.
Cubans on the island are taking the highest possible risk to change their lives. Everybody on the island understands that, as do Cubans in the diaspora. We understand that the way out of the misery and repression is getting rid of the dictatorship. That fight for freedom is the one that needs support.
Rosa María Payá
Hoffman: The last remark is extremely important. I was going to answer your question by saying we need a new generation of flooding the zone with free information.
When Oswaldo Payá, whom I described in my book, was going door-to-door collecting 35,000 signatures for the Varela Project 20 years ago, Facebook didn’t exist. What happened on the streets of Cuba on July 11th last year was largely inspired by a single Facebook Live held by one person in a small town. A broader effort by the United States and others to get information to Cuba would be hugely powerful.
TV and Radio Marti had a purpose in their day, but we need a new generation of tools. Same idea, but we’re in a whole different space in terms of the information revolution.
David E. Hoffman
We already see a huge outpouring in Iran when information spreads. Moving Starlink and turning it on over Iran is a good example. What if we did the same thing over Cuba? TV and Radio Marti had a purpose in their day, but we need a new generation of tools. Same idea, but we’re in a whole different space in terms of the information revolution.
Rosa Maria, you talked about the Sullivan Principles, and their emphasis on companies respecting human rights where they do business, as being effective with South Africa. Championing that cause with the U.S. government is important, but is there any outreach going directly to the private sector from Cuban activists about the importance of standing up for the freedom and human rights of the Cuban people? Are there current examples?
Payá: Cuban civil society leaders and I have been part of several efforts, including when we signed a letter at the start of Hurricane Ian asking hotel owners, especially on the western parts of the country, to open half the rooms in their hotels to people who needed immediate assistance after losing their homes. Many of their rooms already were empty because of the storm.
We also have been trying to reach owners of the hotels in Europe that are part of the repression machinery. All the hotels in Cuba that are owned by the Barcelo family have state security that not only persecutes and keeps surveillance over the employees but also keeps surveillance over the tourists and the guests. Those agents, who are repressors of the Cuban people, are paid by these companies. Not to mention several labor rights that they violate with their own employees.
We have been trying to reach out to them to assume some kind of corporate social responsibility. So far, we have faced the reality that these companies are allies of the Cuban regime by violating labor rights and keeping a friendly approach towards the regime. That has prevented them from being in solidarity with the human rights movement.
David, what led you to write your book, Give Me Liberty, about Rosa Maria’s dad?
Hoffman: While I was in Russia, I became interested in the legacy and works of Andrei Sakharov. I visited where he wrote his famous essay [Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Co-Existence and Intellectual Freedom]. What courage it took for one man who was part of the elite at the time, who was a nuclear physicist and who had worked for the Soviet system, to write that document to challenge that system. He began an effort that lasted until the end of his life to stand up to a totalitarian system. I wrote another book about a radar expert in the Soviet Union who risked his life to aid the United States because he saw what a disaster Soviet communism was.
In Oswaldo Payá, I saw this same spark of courage, integrity, and incredible determination. The book is an exploration of these characteristics, to understand how Oswaldo, from a very early age, had his mind set on trying to win this idea of liberty, even though he had never lived in a state of liberty. The idea lived in his mind and was a powerful determinant that allows us to see this special genius that Sakharov had and that Oswaldo had.
What trends, if any, give you hope in Cuba, as well as across Latin America, in terms of greater freedom and democratic values?
Hoffman: Twenty years ago, when Oswaldo was building support for the Varela Project, he talked about his movement originally being called Movimento Cristiano Liberacion with an L, because he was fond of Lech Walesa and Solidarity. He held up his hand with an L.
The book is an exploration of these characteristics, to understand how Oswaldo, from a very early age, had his mind set on trying to win this idea of liberty, even though he had never lived in a state of liberty.
David E. Hoffman
To me, one of the most remarkable things today is that everywhere I look when people are asking for freedom in Cuba, they’re still holding up their hands with an L. The idea still lives. The methods are changing. Time has gone by, but I think if Oswaldo looked at that crowd of people holding their hands up like that today, he would see his inspiration sprinkled across their minds and their faces.
Payá: His ideas and legacy are definitely alive within the Cuban people. If something gives me hope, it is that protests continue in the face of repression, torture, and state terrorism being applied daily against the citizens.
August was the month with the second highest numbers of protests recorded in the last few years in Cuba. So we, the Cuban people, are determined to be free. That quest requires the support of the international community.
We can see what is going on in the region, and there are reasons to be disappointed or pessimistic. But in the middle of what looks to be the degradation of democracy in our hemisphere, the Cuban people are demanding freedom and democracy and running in the opposite direction towards freedom and liberation. That’s the most important factor: the determination and the will of the people. And on that one, we have it.
