Cuban dissidents get no U.S. aid

Published Friday, October 30, 1998, in the Miami Herald

FRANK CALZON

Cuban dissidents get no U.S. aid

Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C.
OSE GARCIA (not his real name) is a Cuban economist and human-rights activist who works as a warehouse laborer for $12 a month. Caridad Sarmiento is the elderly mother of Jesus Chamber Ramirez, a political prisoner whose whereabouts are unknown. Maria Dominguez, a teacher, is the wife of Felix Bonne, who was arrested last year for urging a political opening. State- security agents searching her home accused her of hiding dollars. ``If we received dollars from abroad, would we live the way we do -- with an empty refrigerator whose door is kept closed with a string? Would we boil hot water with sugar and stale orange rinds for breakfast?'' she retorted.

These are some of the dissidents who many readers no doubt believe receive millions in ``help'' from the Agency for International Development. They do not. And their plights came to mind when I read Herald staff writer Juan Tamayo's Oct. 25 article, U.S. funds efforts to promote democracy in Cuba.

Under current policy, no AID funds can be used to ``help'' the dissidents -- if help is understood to mean financial assistance. The article quoted an AID report to that effect. Unfortunately, references to ``$2.75 million contracted so far by AID for a democracy-building campaign in Cuba'' (including $400,000 for the Center for a Free Cuba) will be understood on the island to be financial assistance to dissidents.

The Center for a Free Cuba sends books and videos to the island and sponsors travel to the island by human-rights activists, professors, labor leaders, and others who help us keep nongovernmental organizations around the world informed about Cuba. It is through educational materials and efforts -- not cash -- that AID grants help promote the civil society necessary for a smooth democratic transition.

Let us look at a larger context. When Polish Solidarity activists went to prison, the church and the American labor movement often provided humanitarian assistance, including cash, to their families. In fiscal year 1998, AID requested from Congress $2.1 million (of its total $6 billion budget) to promote civil society in Cuba.

AID requested similar or larger amounts to promote democracy elsewhere: $18 million in Armenia; $2.6 million in Guatemala; $4 million for El Salvador; $5 million in the Philippines; and $7 million in the Congo. Press reports indicate that AID has spent $26 million to support Indonesian opposition groups since 1995.

AID appropriations are a public record; its Cuba programs are completely transparent. The same cannot be said about Fidel Castro's financing of terrorists and dissemination of anti-American propaganda.

Havana will try four prominent human-rights activists, imprisoned for more than a year for writing the document The Homeland Belongs to Us All. Undoubtedly The Herald's article will be selectively used by the prosecution. Be that as it may, I welcome the public scrutiny provided by a free press, even if occasionally a story inadvertently creates the wrong impression.

The antidote for a less-than-perfect article is further discussion. I am sure that the dissidents in Cuba receiving minuscule amounts of cash assistance from the Cuban-American community -- not the U.S. government -- hope that Cuba's media soon could review the expenditures of the Cuban government, as is done in most democratic societies.