For those intimidated by the length of the Post article, here are a few snippets from near the end.
Readers outside the country can be difficult to please. "Sometimes the Miami groups attack us for not being sufficiently anti-government," Rivero said. "It's hard to do journalism in an atmosphere of fanaticism on both sides."
But publications sympathetic to Cuban exiles are their primary outlet, which makes it possible for the government to label the journalists tools of Miami. On rare occasions, such as when Pope John Paul II was here in 1998, Madrid's El Pais or Le Monde in Paris might ask Rivero for a story. Most Latin American publications, although they might be critical of Cuba, are uninterested in the work of the independents. "They think it's only anti-government propaganda," Rivero said.
"The government calls El Nuevo Herald a tool of the [Cuban American] mafia," he laughed, referring to the Spanish-language sister of the Miami Herald that is heavily weighted toward exile views. "But who else is going to publish us? Does The Washington Post want me to write a column?"
A Cuban Moderate
While some in Miami find Cuba's internal dissidents insufficiently anti-government, Castro claims to see no difference at all between the opposition here and there.
"They are exactly the same thing," he told an interviewer last month. "They both have the same origin and the same leadership. Both are instruments of the U.S. policy against Cuba, both are pro-imperialist, anti-socialist and in favor of annexation."
These attitudes pain Adolfo Fernandez Sainz, another dissident. "Of course, at the bottom of it all, it's the government's fault. . . . But sometimes [the exiles] take a position that is so extreme that they assume anybody of good faith here must be on the side of the government. I don't like any extremes. We're trying to look for an answer. We're not trying to topple the government, especially from one day to the next. It would be dangerous for the U.S., dangerous for Cuba, dangerous for everyone."
It is an oft-heard refrain in Cuba, even among those publicly at odds with the government. A survey of 1,000 newly arrived Cuban immigrants commissioned by the U.S. government last year found that "the perception of respondents is that the number one fear of a majority [on the island] is that chaos and violence may prevail" after a precipitous change of government. "For a large minority, the fear is that exiles may return to claim the homes where they live; then, there are fears expressed in relation to losing free health care, jobs and free education."
and
Elizardo Sanchez is surely the dissident who is best known outside Cuba, and is considered by many to be among the bravest after long years of imprisonment and many arrests. His Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation is the most informed, organized and articulate source of information about political prisoners and the domestic opposition.
While the government denounces him as a right-wing extremist, Sanchez described himself as a "man of the left . . . all my life." He is a socialist who broke with the government in 1967, and says Cuba's best chance for positive change is under the leadership of the 73-year-old Castro. |
