In Cuba, fresh proof of Castro's betrayals

Thursday, June 12th, 2003

HAVANA - Fidel Castro is my obsession. The thought of him leaps into  my mind wherever I am and whenever I think of the world's slew of  dictators. The thought of him makes me queasy, not simply because of  the number of Cubans he has killed, tortured or imprisoned for the  more than four decades he has been in power, but for what he has not  done. He had the chance to replace the tyranny of Gen. Fulgencio  Batista with the new, free government he promised the Cuban people.  Instead, he gave them daily terror.

He promised a better life to the people of Cuba - now 10 million - who  put their hope in him. He never gave them anything more than betrayal.

To this day, he continues to betray them with a brutal, slovenly  Communist state controlled by him as president, chief of state and  commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In fact, he is commander of  every Cuban. He is chief of the national network of Communist  organizations that decides what work Cubans get, how much they earn  and what they get to eat - including a daily loaf of bread and two  eggs a month.

The Communist apparatus and its police, seen everywhere, know the  meager rations are not enough to keep the people alive. Cubans have a saying: El Jefe gives us schooling, medicine and shelter but has forgotten to supply breakfast, lunch or dinner.

"Everybody's poor in Cuba" - I must have heard that 20 times a day  during my time in Havana. Example: Maria earns $7 a month selling baby  clothes in a store. She has to pay $1 a week to her little girl's  baby-sitter, so she has an arrangement: A manager at the clothing  factory steals some of the products, and they split the skimpy  proceeds from her sales on the side.

The Castro regime expects people to steal from the three government  employers open to them - the Communist Party bureaucracy, military and  police. But often, the regime declares pious, hypocritical crackdowns  on theft to show Cubans how lucky they are when Castro does allow them  to snatch food or bargain for it with the government-employed  salespeople.

If theft is how many Cubans survive, barely hidden dissent is how they  keep their hopes and pride alive.

Castro allows one newspaper to be published each day, in Spanish and  English. It is plain propaganda, sold in Havana's squares for a few  cents and overpriced at that. My thesis is that mostly foreigners buy  it as a comical souvenir.

But from time to time, the paper and TV spew out propaganda that is  not at all amusing - Castro's list of current dissenters. So many  people make their opposition to the government as obvious as a  billboard that I realized Castro and the police are not so much  hunting dissenters down as encouraging them to speak up so they can be  easily arrested.

Some of my foreign friends who visit Cuba rarely think of Castro when  they go home, since he has no power beyond his boundaries. They seem  to think he is good enough for Cuba as long as the people get their  daily rations, including that one loaf of bread.

My friends might consider the fact that Castro's cops rounded up about  100 dissidents late last month. Within a day or two, most had been  sentenced to five or 10 years in Castro's dungeons. Support of the  U.S. was the stated or implied crime.

The nights of the roundup, foreign visitors were invited to diplomatic  parties, myself included. I was edgy. My years as a correspondent in  Communist countries taught me to be careful of what I said or to whom  I spoke, and I always considered my job to include keeping dissidents  from police eyes and ears.

At the Havana receptions, at least 30 Cubans I had never met knew my  name, what I did for a living and precisely where I came from. Some  gave me calling cards containing the usual information - names,  addresses, phone numbers. Others also had the names and addresses of  dissenters' organizations.

Were they really dissenters? Or informers? Since I wasn't sure about  every card holder, I tore the cards up when I left.

The true dissenters of Cuba will live with their dignity, always.  Castro will carry the shame of cowardice, always.

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