MORE CUBANS ARE DARING TO EXPRESS THEIR VIEWS ON ONCE-TABOO TOPICS LIKE
DEMOCRACY
Posted on Sat, Dec. 08, 2007
BY MIAMI HERALD STAFF
HAVANA --
Voices that once whispered are rising to a crescendo.
Sylvia, a chemist and self-described socialist, vents that she feels
betrayed by a revolution that ''enslaved'' her. Felipe, a carpenter,
asks in front of his co-workers why Fidel Castro can come up with an
idea one day and have it become law the next. Lisette, a nurse, tells a
total stranger how the medical system has deteriorated since thousands
of Cuban doctors were sent to Venezuela.
Call it the law of unintended consequences: Since Cuba's interim
president, Raúl Castro, called for public meetings to debate the
country's innumerable problems, more and more people are speaking out --
and not just about empty store and pharmacy shelves and lousy public
transportation but topics long off-limits like democracy and freedom.
''In the street, at jobs and in neighborhoods, there's some flexibility
in terms of repression and expression,'' said Ahmed Rodríguez, an
opposition journalist who runs the Youth Without Censorship news agency
in Havana. ``People have lost a little bit of their fear -- not all of it.''
While no one is suggesting that the Cuban government has knocked down
the door to freedom of expression, experts say that little by little,
the entrance has widened. The fact that Cubans, invited by Raúl to speak
up in workplace and community meetings, now also feel more comfortable
doing so in other settings represents a significant shift and
underscores the subtle changes slowly taking place in the nearly 1 ½
years since Fidel Castro fell ill.
Some experts wonder whether the move to allow more open criticism will
backfire and, instead of allowing Cubans to let out steam, will make
them boil over.
''In a closed political system like Cuba's, there is always risk in
promoting that kind of discussion, which is compounded by the fact they
are not delivering on any of this -- people's lives are not getting
better,'' former top CIA Cuba analyst Brian Latell said. ``Maybe we are
already beginning to see early signs of rising or spreading
restlessness. If this goes on, they are playing with fire.''
Cubans agree that some are becoming more vocal in their complaints.
''People can't take it anymore. This revolution was supposed to be one
thing, and now we realize it is something else,'' said a laborer who
asked that his name not be published. ``People want change. The
government held meetings to hear what we had to say, and let me tell
you, people went for it.''
TAKING ACTION
Last month, several youth were arrested for protesting Cuba's municipal
elections, calling it a sham. Weeks later, an organization of rural
women presented the national legislature with a petition allegedly
signed by thousands of women demanding an end to Cuba's dual currency
system. A few days after that, a youth group said it collected 5,000
signatures from students demanding independent universities.
In a rare move, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma alluded this
week to the petition drives in its pages -- coverage that dissidents
said was both new and surprising.
One of the most unexpected displays of debate came last month, when
several intellectuals who spoke out earlier this year against a
government official who in the 1970s led a crackdown on artists were
invited on a state-run television show called Open Dialogue.
''We accustomed ourselves to not debating,'' filmmaker Alfredo Guevara,
a longtime Fidel Castro ally, said on the show, Mexico's La Jornada
newspaper reported. ''We answered Fidel with silence'' and later ''Raúl
had to come'' to begin a dialogue.
The television appearance was thought to be the first time the
government-controlled media openly discussed the 1970s crackdown on
intellectuals. It was also the first time the Cuban press mentioned the
massive nationwide grievance meetings held in October at Raúl Castro's
request.
Cuba-based blogger Yoani Sánchez dismissed the importance of the TV
appearance, calling the show a one-sided ``debate among revolutionaries.''
But the head of the Communist Party's culture committee recently cast
the debate in much broader terms, telling a Cuban magazine that the
revolution is considering a profound transformation.
''The party itself is rethinking its relationship with society to seek a
more direct, more efficient dialogue and greater participation of the
people in decisions,'' Elíades Acosta told the website Cubarte. ``We
aspire to have a society that speaks aloud about its problems, without
fear . . . in which mistakes are publicly aired to seek solutions, in
which the people can express themselves honestly.''
He called for an end of the ``the abuse of institutional practices to
limit criticism.''
Opposition journalist Rodríguez noted that government media seem to have
responded to Raúl Castro's call for openness: Cuban television recently
broadcast a speech by President Bush, and then aired the King of Spain
telling Cuba's No. 1 ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, to shut up.
''There it was, clear as day, on Cubavisión, the king telling Chávez to
shut up,'' he said. ``In the past, we would never have been allowed to
see that.''
He cautioned, however, that the Cuban government is still controlling
the news and rounding up activists at will. Three youth leaders who
presented the university petitions were detained for a week.
Washington's anti-Castro television programming, TV Martí, is
continuously jammed, and Cubans are largely kept off the Internet.
So while more and more people are feeling free to speak out, a 50-year
legacy of repression against free speech is hard to overcome, Cubans
say. Raúl Castro has been described as both a consensus-driven reformer
and a tough security enforcer.
''You know in the universities they are now offering a course called
`Reflections'?'' said Felipe, the carpenter.
Fidel Castro 'writes little essays, calls them `reflections,' and now
students have to study it,'' he said. ``The students will read those
essays and study them, but they will not really debate them. Maybe
people are speaking up more, but they don't do it where it counts, so in
the end, it's all bull.''
A POLICY SHIFT?
Dissidents in Cuba say the change is not only indicative of a policy
shift pushed by Raúl Castro, but also of a fed-up society.
''It's been more than 40 years of this crap already,'' said a Havana
cleaning lady, who admits she voted ''no'' for all the candidates listed
on a recent municipal election ballot. ``Now they want us to tell them
what's wrong.
``We'll tell them a thing or two. We're going to unleash our tongues.''
The Miami Herald withheld the name of the correspondent who prepared
this report and the surnames of the people quoted, because the reporter
did not have the journalist visa required by the Cuban government to
report from the island.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/336903.html
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