By CARL NAGIN, The New York Times, March 30, 1999
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Sunday's game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national team was a a coup for the Clinton Administration's revamped Cuba policy of "people to people" contacts through cultural exchanges. But small successes like this game should not be seen as a step toward political freedom on the island.
In Cuba, government hard-liners have long feared that any American money intended for cultural exchanges would be given to "counter-revolutionaries." When the Clinton Administration announced the current initiatives in January, Fidel Castro cracked down on his opponents. Harsh new laws have made it a crime to "support, facilitate or collaborate with United States policy on Cuba."
Another signal came this month, when four dissidents who had been accused of sedition were finally brought to trial after 19 months in jail. They had been arrested for publishing a manifesto criticizing a Communist Party Congress report that failed to address Cuba's economic crisis and lack of civil liberties.
The trial aroused great indignation around the world -- even in the Vatican and in Spain, Canada and other countries that have relations with Cuba -- in part because of the prominence of one of the defendents, Vladimiro Roca. His father was Blas Roca, a national hero and a founder of the Cuban Communist Party.
The Castro Government says that there are no political prisoners in Cuba, only criminals, but Vladimiro Roca's case belies this claim. A former air force pilot, Mr. Roca worked as a Government economist on Cuban-Soviet relations for more than 20 years.
When I met him in Cuba two years ago, Mr. Roca told me that Mikhail Gorbachev's economic reforms had made him realize that similar changes had to occur in Cuba as well. When Moscow ended price supports for sugar and other aid in the early 1990's, Cuba fell into a depression. In 1993, Mr. Roca signed a manifesto calling for a less centrally organized economy as well as expansion of human rights. A week later he was fired.
After his dismissal, his family was harassed by neighborhood vigilantes, who would stone the Roca home and make noises to prevent them from sleeping. Mr. Roca told me that Cuban officials had encouraged him to leave the country but that he had refused.
In a letter published in The Miami Herald last July, he asked for a fair trial, open to foreign press and diplomats. He wrote that he did not wish "to challenge the authorities or to seek a confrontation" and that his position is "one of reconciliation, tolerance, forgiveness . . . and nonviolence."
However, the only public trial he received was vilification by the Government-controlled Cuban press. To avert protests, another 90 dissidents were arrested and detained until the secret trial was over. Two weeks ago he received a five-year jail term.
Baseball games and exchanges can help get Americans and Cubans talking again. But nothing will really change on the island so long as Mr. Castro refuses to listen to his own people.
Carl Nagin, an investigative journalist, is a former staff reporter for the PBS series "Frontline."
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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