Laura Pollán Toledo, teacher and human-rights campaigner, died on October 14th, aged 63

THE house at 963 Calle Neptuno, in the centre of Havana, was small, but Laura Pollán kept it beautifully. The grey floor-tiles with their snowflake motif were always swept clean, even though her fluffy mongrel terrier shed his long hair everywhere, and though the door was kept open to get some air in from the bike-filled, rowdy, dusty street. In the front living room she had cane chairs with heart-shaped backs, and triangles of lace decorated the shelves. Outside, the tiny back yard was a jungle of pot plants and climbers, with neatly folded washing hung against the ochre walls. And the tower of the Iglesia del Carmen watched over it all.

But her house was also a cell for liberty. The living-room walls were hung with lists of the names of political prisoners, their photos, and a huge chart that showed them bursting from their chains when her group notched up a success. Prisoners’ wives and daughters crowded there for her monthly Literary Teas. She once got 72 women in, under the slowly turning ceiling fan, and put up 25 overnight. They came from all over Cuba: Pinar del Rio, Santa Clara, Las Tunas, Manzanillo (in the east, where she was born), even from the Sierra Maestra, where Fidel Castro had holed up in the mountains to start his revolution. They gathered at her house because she was central, and had a telephone. After 2003 the phone kept ringing, and she would answer it in a whisper, knowing it was tapped; each call would end with “Cuidado”, “Be careful”. A security camera and floodlights appeared outside her front door, supplementing the plain-clothes men who loitered there. Her bookshelf now held a tiny statue of Santa Rita, the saint of the impossible.

What had started all this was the arrest of her husband, Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez, for “acting against the territorial integrity of the state”. Seventy-four others were arrested with him in that Black Spring of 2003, and given average prison sentences of 20 years. Ms Pollán knew he had done nothing. The picture of him she wore emblazoned on her T-shirt showed a mild, smiling man, an engineer, who kept his glasses on a cord round his neck. He liked to underline phrases in the newspapers and clip pieces out, organising them under “Politics” or “Environment”. She supposed he was just trying to point out contradictions in the government line. They didn’t discuss it, any more than she took part when his friends from the banned Liberal Democratic Party came round to talk. She would disappear to the kitchen then, making coffee, and leave the men alone.

But they were taken away. Husbands, fathers, brothers, disappeared. Ms Pollán came home from teaching evening class to find 12 state security agents invading her house, carrying away the clippings and two old typewriters. One agent stood by even as she and Héctor tried to say goodbye to each other. Two weeks later she started to bring together the women she kept meeting at the Villa Marista barracks and at various government offices, seeking news of their men. They became the Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White.

Ms Pollán came brand-new to campaigning. She was a mother (of Laurita), a housewife and a teacher: someone who loved literature and had taught peasants to read in the early years of the revolution. She had never done anything wilder. Short, blonde and stout, she was not cut out to be hauled into a bus by the police. All she wanted was to see Héctor back, and all the others. Her group would meet each Sunday at the church of Santa Rita in Miramar, Havana’s grandest district, say the rosary, hear mass, and then walk ten blocks in silence along Quinta Avenida on the green verges under the palm trees. The women wore white, symbolising pure intentions, and carried gladioli, a single stem each.

Yet politics crept in. At the end of every march the women would chant “Libertad!”—for Cuba as a whole, as much as for their men. They would throw out pencils with Derechos Humanos on one side and Damas en Blanco on the other, hoping that, slowly, people would pick them up. Enemies called them “mercenaries” and “Ladies in Green”, in the pay of the United States, and Ms Pollán had to admit that they did get American dollars and American parcels for their imprisoned men. Shock mobs of other women were especially bused in to attack them, beat them and pull their hair. Ms Pollán could fight back with the best: when a man called her “Puta!” once, she threw her gladioli in his face. In one battle in September she was crushed against a wall, which may have set off the breathing troubles that killed her.

By then, the 75 prisoners they were campaigning for had been released; most by the intervention of the Catholic Church and the government of Spain, but around 20 by their own efforts. Héctor, gaunt and thin, came out only last February. The numbers of Ladies dwindled, to 15 or so, as their work seemed to be done. But for Ms Pollán it was not done. Her Ladies had to go on marching as long as the laws remained that could fill the prisons again. As long as Cuba was not free, she would go on sitting at her computer with her little dog stretched out on the tiles beside her, alert for the telephone, with her front door open and Santa Rita at the ready, and the ceiling fan turning slowly in the smothering air.

The Cuban Democratic Alliance, a group of opposition leaders and former political prisoners, released a document Wednesday in Havana in which they refuse to be involuntarily committed to government hospitals in cases of illness.

“We don’t want to be committed to the regime’s hospital centers except in the direst cases of medical necessity, requiring immediate surgical intervention, such cases being confirmed by an independent doctor of our confidence,” reads the text. The aim is to “avoid the possibility that a supposed sickness or the death of any one of us could be used to further the political aims of the regime,” it added.

The declaration is signed by Gisela Delgado Sablón, Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz, René Gómez Manzano, as well as former Group of 75 members José Daniel Ferrer García, Iván Hernández Carrillo, and Héctor Palacios Ruiz.

The document specifies that in the case of death, the signatories wish to be watched over in their respective homes “for at least a night,” in accordance with Cuban tradition. They request to be “buried,” and that the funeral service “be attended by a brother of the cause.” The document goes on to say that “the responsibility to apply these principles in the case of the death or incapacitation of one signatory falls to the brothers of the cause.”

The members of the Cuban Democratic Alliance explained that they took these measures following the “untimely death” of Damas de Blanco leader Laura Pollan on October 14.

The lawmakers — led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.) — fired off a letter this week to Repsol, urging the Spanish company to stop its plans to partner with the Cuban government on an offshore drilling plan in the waters between Havana and Key West, Fla.

The Spanish company reportedly could begin drilling wells in Cuban waters as early as the end of this year.
“This oil drilling scheme endangers the environment, and enriches the Cuban tyranny. Those are two huge strikes,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement. “Repsol shouldn’t need a third strike to walk away from this.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are opposed to Cuba’s proposed plans to drill 16 oil and gas wells in waters 50 miles from Key West, just outside of the jurisdiction of U.S. regulations. They have repeatedly blasted the plan and introduced legislation that would deter companies like Repsol from partnering with Cuba.

“We urge Repsol to reassess the risks inherent in partnering with the Castro dictatorship, including the risk to its commercial interests with the United States,” the letter says. “We respectfully ask that Repsol abandon any of its proposed oil-drilling activities in Cuban waters.”

The letter also warns Repsol that it could face liability in U.S. courts if it forges ahead with the drilling partnership.

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), who has authored legislation that would penalize international oil companies that operate in Cuban waters, has also signed onto the letter.

But not everyone thinks such legislation is a good idea. William Reilly, former head of U.S. EPA under President George H.W. Bush and the co-chairman of President Obama’s panel that investigated the 2010 BP PLC oil spill, said such legislation would be “counterproductive.” If Cuba does move forward with its drilling plans, Reilly said, it would be best for it to do so with the help of a company that has an established drilling safety record, like Repsol.

“What you want is a company like Repsol, which has its own interest in the United States, has rigs in the Gulf, applies for permits from the United States government,” Reilly said earlier this year. “I don’t know who we would get — maybe [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chávez — if it were so limited that we couldn’t have a responsible company doing that drilling” (E&ENews PM, May 16).

The letter’s other co-signers include Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), David Rivera (R-Fla.), Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), Dan Burton (R-Ind.), Steve Austria (R-Ohio), Joe Baca (D-Calif.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.), John Carter (R-Texas), John Barrow (D-Ga.), Robert Andrews (D-N.J.), Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), Dennis Ross (R-Fla.), Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.), Sandy Adams (R-Fla.), Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), Candice Miller (R-Mich.), Pedro Pierluisi (D-Puerto Rico), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), Steve Rothman (D-N.J.), Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) and Ed Royce (R-Calif.).
Click here to read the letter.

11 Damas de Blanco were violently detained Sunday morning by Cuban police and more than a dozen agents of State Security in Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba, when they prepared to march to a local church.

Former prisoner of conscience Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia told the press that the women, “threw themselves on the ground and began to shout “Freedom” (…) they were dragged to the buses by police, thrown in by brute force and taken away from Palma Soriano.

All those arrested were liberated hours later and returned to their homes.

Meanwhile in Havana Laura Pollan, leader of the Damas de Blanco, declared that during sunday mass in the Church of Saint Rita in Havana, the faithful prayed for the liberation of opposition members Sara Marta Fonseca, Iris Perez Aguilera, and Yelena Garces Napoles.

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…
Read more
or
Read this article in the Florida Sun Sentinel

When pondering U.S. relations with Cuba and how to effect democratic change there, it helps to retain the perspective of history. Just sending athletes to Cuba to engage in some “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” won’t change Cuba.
In reading the recent spate of articles suggesting American athletes be sent to Cuba to supplement hard-nose diplomats, I was reminded of a story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Cancer Ward. The KGB had painted “Fresh Meat, Fresh Vegetables” signs on trucks taking victims of the Stalinist repression to Siberia. An American journalist returning to his hotel room, after attending an official reception, saw the trucks and the next morning sent a story to his newspaper that the distribution of fruits and fresh vegetables had improved recently in Moscow. A single glimpse often leads to false conclusions…
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or
Read this article in the Miami Herald

The agreement concludes an investigation launched by the Treasury Department over a series of actions that it says could result in much higher sanctions.
August 26, 2011

Between December 12, 2005 and March 31, 2006, Chase processed 1,711 monetary transfers of a total of approximately $178.5 million with the participation of Cuban nationals, in direct violation of the law of the United States.

The bank’s operation was discovered after another bank alerted the government anonymously.

The Office of Foreign Asset Control determined that the managers of the large, sophisticated financial institution acted with knowledge and disregard of the impropriety of their conduct, that they undertook said conduct with an apparent imprudence and that they didn’t take even a minimal grade of precaution or care with respect to their obligations as an important financial isntitution.

On Wednesday, four women carrying placards demonstrated for forty minutes on the stairway to the Cuban National Capitol building in Havana, demanding liberty and democracy in Cuba, while dozens of spectators contemplated the scene with a mix of fear and indifference.

“Our goal is that one day our people will be united,” said protestor Sara Marta Fonseca, one of the four women detained yesterday following the protest, which was recorded on cell phone cameras by colleagues who later sent the footage to press agencies within and without Cuba.

Fonseca, Tania Maldonado Santos, Mercedes Evelyn Garcia Alvarez, and Odalys Caridad Sanabria Rodriguez, members of the Human Rights Party and the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights, staged the protest to “call for the cessation of repression against the Damas de Blanco, the opposition, and the people of Cuba.

“We chose the Capitol because it’s a very centric location, where there are many passers-by, both Cuban and foreign tourists, and we wanted to call attention to the people of Cuba,” said Fonseca while she walked to her house in Rio Verde, Boyeros, minutes after being freed.

The National Capitol building was the seat of the Cuban Republic’s Congress before the coming to power of the Castro dictatorship.

Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen urged the Obama administration to strengthen its sanctions against Havana in retaliation for attacks on the Damas de Blanco.

“Once more, the henchmen of the perfidious Cuban regime have assaulted the Damas while they march peacefully in support of liberty and human rights in Cuba,” expressed Ros-Lehtinen, president of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

“The Castros’ regime of violence against women, including the Damas de Blanco, is increasing,” the legislator emphasized in a press released, in which she accused Havana of attempting to suppress and silence the Cuban people’s calls for liberty.

Ros-Lehtinen said that those democratic nations that express solidarity with freedom fighters in the Middle East and North Africa ought to support the democratic opposition in Cuba as well.

She urged the Obama administration to take measures against Havana similar to those it has adopted against the Syrian government.

“I urge the administration to demonstrate the same firmness against Castroite tyranny and repeal the relaxation of regulations against the regime in Havana,” she said.

by Mauricio Claver Carone

There’s a fine line to be drawn between Cuban-Americans visiting and sending money to relatives in Cuba and Cuban-Americans enjoying a cheap vacation on the island with a cursory nod to a second cousin. While the first is imbued with genuine humanitarian purpose, the latter is tantamount to tossing a financial lifeline to the Castros’ repressive dictatorship.

Unfortunately, over the last two-years, the Obama administration has made crossing that line all too easy and done so at a time when the Castros’ regime faces the greatest political, social and economic crisis of its 52-year history…Read more