Today's Cuba a Nicer Place? Ask Maritza Lugo

by Mary Anastasia O'Grady

Two weeks ago former Cuban political prisoner Armando Valladares spoke at Duke University about his imprisonment, at the age of 22, by the Castro regime.

Reporting on the speech in Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle, Anya Sostek wrote, "He told of the urine and excrement from other prisoners guards dumped on his face while he slept. Holding up his hands, he showed the scars from rat bites. He described the fungus that grew on his body up to his eyes, and how he would try to shove the food from the plate directly into his mouth, so he would not have to touch it with his infected hands. And he told of the time a guard jumped on his broken leg." Said Mr. Valladares, "I am not the exception, there are thousands of prisoners that have stories more dramatic than mine."

Mr. Valladares served 22 years in a Cuban prison because he refused to place a card on his desk stating that he backed the communist government. The judge who sent him to prison, Ms. Sostek reported, "sat through the trial reading a comic book with his feet up on his desk and then sentenced Valladares to 30 years." Thanks to the efforts of a dedicated girlfriend who later became his wife, as well as to the intervention of former French President Francois Mitterand, he was released in 1982.

That the pattern of brutality and repression against political opposition, as described by Mr. Valladares, continues almost 20 years later is a fact recognized by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. And it is at the heart of the Cuban exile community's refusal to give up Elian Gonzalez. Under a state committed to crushing liberty at all costs, there is almost no chance that his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, speaks his conscience. Even on the slim odds that he does, a return to Cuba could not be in the best interest of Elian.

A first-grader who tells stories about life with a slide in your own backyard and about children who drink milk even though they are over the age of seven, is sure to be a big threat to the security of the mad, yellow-bearded geriatric and his henchmen. It follows that Castro's very survival will turn on remaking the child into a good little Red who denounces the U.S. As Cuba's Code of the Child states, every aspect of society must work on "the development of his communist personality."

Worse yet, if Elian's love of freedom proves intractable and the state is unable to break his spirit, it is not hard to imagine that as a young man he will share the experience of Mr. Valladares.

According to a list compiled by the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Directorate, together with the Internal Dissident Working Group, political prisoners in Cuba now officially number about 600. There are undoubtedly more, but the state has cleverly taken to charging dissidents with criminal offenses. A small number of prisoners were released following the 1998 visit of Pope John Paul II, but according to the Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Cuban Political Prisoners, most of those were common criminals. (Castro has also cracked down on the church since the papal visit: all Holy Week processions were cancelled this year and Cuba sources say internal security has increased its surveillance of Catholics.)

A 1998 letter from imprisoned independent journalist Bernardo Arevalo Padron to Fidel Castro demonstrates how little things have changed since Mr. Valladares was released: "There are bedbugs in abundance which feed on our blood, many prisoners sleep on the floor without a mattress or even a board and there is a plague of rodents which infest us with diseases. Meanwhile, the physical abuse by the military officials continues undeterred, and to top it all the military steals the food from the packages our families bring on visitation days."

Among important new enemies of the state today is Maritza Lugo Fernandez, a 36-year-old wife and mother of two daughters -- ages 15 and 7 -- who has been in prison since December and is awaiting trial on a charge of public disorder.

Ms. Lugo is a serious threat to the regime because of her exceptional organizational skills, her charisma and her fervent dedication to Cuban civil society. Before her imprisonment she was holding community meetings at her home -- sometimes attracting up to 70 people -- to work on solutions to problems such as food and milk shortages and to discuss larger political issues.

When Ms. Lugo's husband became a political prisoner in 1995 she helped to organize the Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Cuban Political Prisoners. And just before Havana hosted the Ibero-American Summit in November, she put together a successful meeting of non-governmental organizations pushing for a broad coalition to oppose the government. That her two daughters are now without parents doesn't seem to concern family-oriented Fidel or for that matter his alter ego, Janet Reno.

After her arrest, Ms. Lugo was held in Havana's Technical Investigative Department of the Police, where she was put in a small cell with two mental patients. She has since been moved to the infamous Via Marista state security headquarters, a place known for using cold rooms with bright lights, blindfolds and other savage tactics designed to psychologically break political prisoners. Her family sees her for 10 minutes weekly and suspects she is being drugged. Ms. Lugo, a devout Catholic, has been repeatedly denied visits from the local priest.

In order to leave prison, Mr. Valladares says that one has to state: "All my life has been a mistake, I've been wrong all my life, God does not exist, I want you to give me the opportunity to join a communist society." He said that of the 80,000 individuals imprisoned by Castro for political offenses over the past 40 years, 70,000 have been broken and forced to pay obeisance to Fidel. But that means some 10,000 have paid the huge costs for conscientious expression and a refusal to denounce truth. They have demonstrated remarkable courage, no doubt feeling as Mr. Valladares did, that suffering was better than the humiliation of capitulating to Castro.

"For me, that would have meant to commit spiritual suicide . . . I never lost my freedom. Freedom is not the space where you can walk around. There are lots of people in Cuba who have space to walk and they are not free."

END

Mary Anastasia O'Grady

Wall Steet Journal
April 21, 2000
Ms. O'Grady edits the Americas

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