CNN, November 24, 1998
HAVANA (Reuters) -- The head of Cuba's Catholic Church on Tuesday urged residents to respond to a surge in crime by embracing moral values while a state newspaper blamed Cuba's "enemies" for the problem.
Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the archbishop of Havana, wrote in a church newsletter that Cuban society had been shocked by recent "crimes full of cruelty" including murders in Havana.
Ortega said these violent crimes were accompanied by rising robberies, prostitution and drug use.
"At this moment in our national life, it is imperative that we Cubans learn to confront this fatal wave (of crimes) with renewed arguments based on personal, family and social values," Ortega wrote in the "Here is the Church" newsletter.
The state newspaper Trabajadores adopted a different focus, accusing Cuba's enemies of exaggerating the problem to damage the communist-ruled nation's image and of encouraging crime as a way of fomenting a "counter revolution."
"Our enemies will always try to stimulate disorder, indiscipline, crime and corruption, because, bereft of any other ways of attracting support, they have no alternative but to look to anti-social elements as the sole social base potentially available for counter revolution," the newspaper said.
In the last few months, Cuba's capital Havana has been abuzz with reports and rumors of brutal murders, violent rapes and a wave of robberies.
Cuba's tightly-controlled state media, anxious to present the best possible image of the island's socialist system, rarely report crimes. So the apparent surge has shocked residents of an island that is still relatively free of violent crime compared with other Caribbean and Latin American states.
Authorities have responded with a crackdown, deploying black-bereted Special Brigade police on streets, rounding up prostitutes, pimps and hustlers and organizing neighbors into vigilante groups known as "Popular Detachments of Revolutionary Vigilance."
Ortega wrote that it would be too easy and wrong to respond to increased criminal violence with anger and repression. "In this way we will always be putting the blame on someone else, and we will not be exposing ourselves to the test of a collective examination of conscience," he said.
Cuba's authorities have said they will be "implacable" with criminals and "enemies of the people and the revolution." But they have been reluctant to make public detailed statistics on crime and have appeared to play down the problem.
Trabajadores, the official workers' weekly, said without giving details that Cuba's murder rate was "five, ten and even 20 times" less than other countries in the hemisphere.
In an editorial, it added that a large part of the blame for crime in Cuba must be placed on the effects of the "war, economic and otherwise" waged by "imperialism" against the island. This was a clear reference to the United States, which maintains a long-running economic embargo against Cuba.
Trabajadores said there was also a direct link between what it termed "negative tendencies," a euphemism for crime, and the introduction of so-called "market elements" into the Cuban economy. Cuban leaders acknowledge that the government's cautious economic reforms have produced unprecedented income inequalities in society.
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