Opposition Sets Course Due North

POLITICS-CUBA:
Opposition Sets Course Due North
Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jan 4 (IPS) - Splintered and voiceless, Cuba's dissident movement has failed to unyoke itself from U.S. policy towards this socialist country, whose future has been the focus of the most diverse speculation since President Fidel Castro became ill.

Some dissident sectors say that now that the Democratic Party controls the U.S. Congress, changes in the George W. Bush administration's strategy of confrontation with Cuba might be possible.

"Cuba and the United States have to end their cold war," Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a spokesman for the Arco Progresista, a coalition of small social-democrat groups critical of Washington's position, told IPS.

In his view, "the ground should be prepared for interchange and dialogue" with the government that will succeed Bush, "which will probably not be Republican."

After many years in which no receptions or meetings of any kind were held at the U.S. Interests Section (USINT) in Havana, which previously were attended by dozens of dissidents, Cuesta Morúa met the current Chief of Mission, Michael Parmly, in November.

"We are still critical of the embargo," he said, referring to the restrictions imposed on Cuba by Washington more than four decades ago. He also expressed his opposition to the plans of the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba.

"What has changed is USINT's willingness to listen to all the different viewpoints within the opposition," he added.

According to Cuesta Morúa, the USINT chief of mission showed himself willing to "be open to Cuban reality in its entirety and diversity."

Parmly also clearly indicated that "his mission was not to dictate guidelines on how Cuba's transition should take place, which is a matter for Cubans to decide," he added. "Upon that basis, we agreed to talk," added the opposition leader, according to whom the dissident movement reached the end of 2006 "with a degree of legitimacy that is irreversible."

The government temporarily headed by Raúl Castro, Fidel's younger brother, who has provisionally replaced the president while he has been convalescing from a serious illness since late July, has chosen to accept that "the opposition is a reality" in this Caribbean island nation governed by a single party regime, according to Cuesta Morúa.

However, Elizardo Sánchez, president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, another dissident group, said that "to speak of 'opposition' in this country might be a rather grandiose term, because there are very few of us."

"There is a pro-democracy human rights movement, but it suffered a severe blow in 2003. Nevertheless, it has been recovering, and is gaining visibility day by day," Sánchez said in an interview with IPS. Seventy-five dissidents were arrested that year and sentenced to lengthy prison terms on charges of conspiring with Washington to destabilise Cuba.

Meanwhile, the issue of financial aid from Washington has again raised the question of how independent, or otherwise, the dissidents are. The authorities call them all, without distinction, "counterrevolutionary mercenaries."

This time the trigger came from Washington, where a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in November claimed that the funds assigned to the Cuban opposition for specific actions had been misspent and failed to have the desired impact. The study was commissioned by congressmen Jeff Flake, Republican, and William Delahunt, Democrat, both in favour of a change in Washington's Cuba policy. In mid-December they led a bipartisan delegation to the island, but did not hold talks with members of the dissident movement.

"The U.S. has spent millions of dollars in democracy assistance to Cuba with little or nothing to show for it," Flake complained to the U.S. press.

Among the ranks of the opposition, reactions to the GAO report ranged from outright rejection to demands that the financial assistance that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) channels to organisations working for political change in Cuba be standardised.

"All the financial aid being received now is like a dress rehearsal for the assistance that will be needed during Cuba's reconstruction," Sánchez said, without commenting on when he expects that to happen.

In his view, "most dissident activists live in poverty, and they cannot be asked to give up the financial aid just to avoid accusations of being mercenaries."

Sánchez was a signatory, along with three other well-known dissident leaders, of a letter delivered to Flake and Delahunt asking for "urgent and vital" financial aid to be restored to "political prisoners" and their families, and members of the human rights movement.

"These people need food, medicine and clothing, so we are in favour of any form of humanitarian aid that can be secured, even from the government in Washington," the letter emphasised.

It was also signed by Marta Beatriz Roque of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba, which takes positions largely in line with U.S. policy on Cuba; Gisela Delgado of the Independent Libraries Project; and Vladimiro Roca of the Cuban Social Democratic Party.

"Most people in the movement for human rights and democracy see the United States, the great republic to the North, as an ally, a friend, a force that backs us now and must surely back us later," said Sánchez.

In Sánchez's opinion, there are few exceptions to this general view, although he said that sometimes the hopes placed in Washington seem "excessive," when it has been "influencing affairs in Cuba for a century and a half."

Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo is one of the critics of this position, because this cash funding "jeopardises the independence of those who oppose the government by peaceful means, seeking a democratic opening."

"So many Cuban exiles are well-off economically, and they should be the ones to help the dissidents within the country," said Gutiérrez Menoyo, adding that the United States' strategy of confrontation "contributes nothing at all to democratisation in Cuba.."

Gutiérrez Menoyo is the leader of Cuban Change, an organisation he founded while in exile in the United States. He has been living in Cuba since 2003, although he has still not obtained a legal residence permit.

Arco Progresista has also distanced itself from financial aid from the U.S. government.

"We reject this funding because it comes from a government that is virtually at war with Cuba, and anyone receiving such funds could easily be considered enemies of this country," said Cuesta Morúa.

He argued that support from non-governmental organisations and civil society is one thing, and support from governments is quite another, as it "undermines the independence" of groups opposed to the Cuban government, and tends to bias them in favour of particular interests. (END/2007)

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