Cuban writers silent on regime's crackdown on dissidents

Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, The Miami Herald.

At an extraordinary meeting of the National Union of Writers and Artists of  Cuba, attended by ''special guest'' Fidel Castro, the attendees were coerced  into signing a statement against U.S. ''fascism'' and the war on Iraq.

I think that no one mentioned -- much less discussed -- the wave of  repression unleashed by the regime against journalists, poets, intellectuals  and others in Cuba for the crime of expressing their ideas, a topic that was  a lot more urgent and relevant for such a gathering.

But, of course, the purpose of the meeting and the call to condemn U.S.  actions halfway around the world was precisely to divert people's attention  from events in Cuba itself. The presence of the commander-in-chief was part  of the campaign of terror being inflicted on Cuban intellectuals.

What's most remarkable about that campaign is precisely its brazenness, the  scant effort to conceal its true motives and the shamelessness of its  excesses: summary trials; exorbitant sentences; executions carried out hours  after sentences were imposed; the showy display of police forces, including  police dogs, invading entire city blocks to arrest a single peaceful, unarmed  poet; and the appearance of the Maximum Leader at a meeting of intellectuals  to intimidate them in person.

Add to these indecencies the obvious ploy of timing the repressive acts with  the Iraq war to keep them out of front pages and the obvious effort again to  keep the United States from lifting the embargo.

What exceeds all boundaries of shamelessness, however, is accusing the  Americans of fascism. When, with its recent actions, the Cuban regime has  only ratified its fascist nature, both in its policies and essence.

At the risk of getting carried away by my professional deformation and  becoming excessively pedagogic, I remind the reader that fascism is based on  emotion, not on thought. What's more, fascism is an enemy of the intellect.  That is why it persecutes intellectuals and turns them into servile  propaganda tools.

A classic fascist regime (Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy) is built  around a military leader who embodies the fatherland. Therefore, it demands  loyalty, not thoughtful adherence, and this loyalty must be manifested in  massive demonstrations with the display of the largest possible number of  symbols and emblems.

Along with this type of loyalty, and closely linked to it, fascism's other  predominant emotion is resentment, generally against a foreign power (the  British, for Hitler) but also against a domestic foe (the Jews, also for  Hitler.)

Loyalty is forged in the rejection of these enemies, who, by being labeled  foreign and traitors, serve to draw lines around the essence of the nation,  represented by the leader. The United States of course plays the role of a  necessary enemy for the Cuban regime.

Linked to that resentment is the fascist cult of violence and death itself.  The slogan most disseminated by the Castro regime, ''Patria o muerte''  (Homeland or death), comes from a truly fascist stock.

Derived from the cult of violence, fear is the other emotion promoted by  fascism. It is a double-edged emotion because it may be the very origin of  fascism, upon which it builds its warmongering, repressive and propagandistic  framework. While the idea is to frighten the enemies of the state, the fear  of annihilation, of literally disappearing, is what compels the desire to  destroy the opponents, real or contrived. Fear issues from the exercise of  power in its pure state, bereft of ideas, the way it is done currently in  Cuba. What terrifies those who perpetrate it is that the irrational exercise  of power by those in power leads to self-destruction, the political version  of the death instinct studied by Freud.

It also leads to the kind of scramble for power that creates blood baths and  even suicides, as in Hitler's case. Shakespeare's tragedies already foretold  all this.

The clearest indication of the Havana regime's fascist nature is the three  death sentences applied to the alleged hijackers of the ferryboat in which  they tried to flee the island. These were a form of punishment against  domestic enemies and against the foreign power that would give shelter to  those ''traitors'' and let them go unpunished. It was also a warning to the  rest of the population.

The executions also were an allusion to the violent origin of the regime and  the infamous paredones (execution walls) upon which it built its power.

An unbridled cult of death and violence, those death sentences were endorsed  by a poet and intellectual, Roberto Fernández Retamar, a member of the  Council of State. According to the current Cuban legislation, that body must  ratify every death sentence. A single nay blocks the execution.

To make Fernández Retamar an accessory to these actions -- we won't know  whether out of fear or conviction -- serves the double purpose of  legitimizing them and simultaneously annihilating any likely intellectual  opposition. Accessory or not, Fernández Retamar is another victim of Cuban  fascism because, as a poet and an intellectual, he is now finished.

Poets Raúl Rivero and Fernández Retamar are the protagonists of the current  drama in Cuba. Both have been silenced, the former by being imprisoned, the  latter by having to hide in the pit of power. That body does not speak, it  utters slogans that are the poetry of fascism.

Fernández Retamar should have appeared before the National Union of Writers  and Artists of Cuba to justify his vote. He may yet have to do it, in the  not-too-distant future.

Roberto González Echevarría is Sterling professor of Hispanic and comparative  literatures at Yale University and author of The Pride of Havana: A History  of Cuban Baseball.

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