By Frank Calzon
September 11, 2011
Four young women holding a banner made from a bedsheet were standing halfway up the huge escalinata that leads into Cuba’s former capitol building, a close replica of the U.S. Capitol. The women were holding a bedsheet banner and loudly shouting: “Libertad.” “Libertad.”
The Havana building no longer houses Cuba’s parliament; it houses the Cuban Academy of Science. Yet, it remains a powerful icon for Cubans wanting to restore the rule of law and a freely elected, independent legislature.
The unusual demonstration attracted about 100 passersby. Finally, a woman, obviously connected to the government, and a uniformed police officer approached and grabbed one of the demonstrators. In a typical civil-disobedience response, all of the demonstrators sat down and refused to turn over their banner. Amazingly, the crowd began to yell: “Let them go. Aren’t you ashamed? Don’t abuse the women.” The police officer and government woman retreated, but about 30 uniformed officers arrived to arrest the demonstrators, drag them into police vehicles and speed away.
Cuban authorities are seeing a new face of opposition. Cubans call it “the Resistance” and spell it with a capital R, the same way the word “Revolution” is capitalized in official state media. Moreover, the Resistance is employing the same tactics of civil disobedience used by Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders in the United States. One small dissident organization in Cuba is named for Rosa Parks.
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What is also new is that the Castro brothers’ regime no longer enjoys the impunity of anonymity. With new technology, the regime’s actions are now at risk of public exposure. Hardly a week goes by without a “freedom video” reaching the outside world.
Despite the fact that the island has one of the world’s lowest rates of access to the Internet, there appear to be a growing number of dissident bloggers.
Blogger Yoani Sanchez has received numerous international awards, including the 2009 Maria Moors Cabot Prize from New York’s Columbia University. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and she has exchanged messages with President Obama. One way Cuban bloggers gain access to the Internet is by posing as foreigners and visiting Cuba’s hotels. Flash drives are used to distribute items of interest gleaned from the Internet.
Among the most courageous Resistance groups is the Ladies in White — mothers, sisters, wives of some 75 writers, independent journalists, librarians, and human-rights activists rounded up and thrown in prison in 2003 by the Castros’ regime. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Mary O’Grady observed that “rocks, iron bars, and sticks are no match for the gladiolas and courage of these peaceful Cuban protesters.”
Then there are the punk rockers. Their music is banned in Cuba, just as similar music was banned by communist regimes in East Berlin and Prague. Still the Resistance is heard.
Gorki Aguila, the founder of the band Porno para Ricardo, was imprisoned but released after a sizable international protest. The band’s provocative music and lyrics continue to mock the regime and its leaders. Its videos can be seen on YouTube, and having once been jailed, Gorki says he’s no longer afraid.
What the samisdat movement was for Soviet dissidents, who copied and passed censored and banned books and articles, what German Protestant churches were to the defeat Erich of Honecker and East German communism, and what the students and artists who gathered around Vaclav Havel to overturn communism in Czechoslovakia, is what Cuba’s communists are seeing and hearing from young dissident rockers, bloggers, and the Ladies in White.
All courageously stand up to face down the Castros’ brutality and security forces and give voice and hope to Cubans that they can break the political and economic paralysis imposed by the Castros and live instead in the world of the 21st century.
Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Arlington, Va.
