Journalist: Olance Nogueras Rofes

They threatened him, they beat him, they arrested him 21 times, but the independent Cuban journalist didn't quit.

''In Cuba, people feel the moment of change getting closer. Some people stopped me in the street and told me what needed to be done with those people (the Castro dictatorship) was to blow up more bombs... The consensus among independent reporters is that the attacks are the responsibility of clandestine cells who have chosen to use violence and who have connections with members of the Cuban armed forces...''

On March 8, 1996, Olance Nogueras Rofes spoke from Cienfuegos, Cuba to a radio station in the United States and denounced as murderers those who had shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes a few days before. It wouldn't be the first time the 29-year-old Nogueras would be arrested and interrogated for working as an independent journalist in a country where no human right is respected. This time, however, matters took a more sinister turn. The Cuban State Security thugs showed up at 2 a.m. and threw Nogueras into a car.

''We're going to show you we have more balls than you,'' one of the officers told him. When Nogueras saw they were approaching the area of the Cienfuegos oil refinery, 21 miles outside the city, he began to fear for his life. ''It's a fenced, high security area and I thought they were going to make it look like I was committing sabotage so they could kill me,'' said Nogueras.

''What helped me the most in those moments was my Christian faith.'' The State Security thugs ended up dumping Nogueras shoeless in the middle of the road. Then, in almost total darkness, the reporter made his way cross country back to the city, arriving home hours later with his feet badly torn up. The experience did not intimidate him. Neither danger, beatings or death threats were able to make Nogueras stop. However, the Cuban regime finally got its way by threatening him with a long prison term during which he would no longer be able to work as a reporter.

Faced with that or exile, Nogueras chose exile, arriving in the United States a little over a week ago with his wife Betania. The reporter said he was very grateful for the help of El Nuevo Herald staff writer Soren Triff and others who are assisting him to settle in Miami. He would like to complete a Masters in journalism, possibly at Florida International University, and is also anxious to start writing again.

Raised in an anti-communist family in Cienfuegos, one of Cuba's major cities, Nogueras managed to study journalism at the University of Havana and at the Instituto Internacional de Periodismo José Martí without becoming a member of the Union of Young Communists, something unusual in Cuba's totalitarian society. Back in Cienfuegos, Nogueras soon got into trouble with the regime. In January, 1993, he aired a report on the local government radio station, Radio Ciudad del Mar, in which he revealed that Cuba had the second highest suicide rate in Latin America. (It's # 1 now.)

''I was reprimanded and sentenced to taking elocution lessons,'' said Nogueras. But the young reporter paid no attention to the constant reprimands and continued to steer toward social problems and political themes. ''I was pretty hard-headed,'' he said. At about that time, Nogueras started listening to Miami radio stations and was impressed by the wide variety of information available, he said. He also started hearing about what dissidents inside Cuba were saying, people like Sebastian Arcos Bergnes and Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz.

What finally got Nogueras kicked out of the ranks of Cuba's government journalists was an interview he recorded in October, 1994 with Bishop Emilio Aranguren, secretary general of the Cuban Bishops Conference. In the interview, which Nogueras managed to get on the air without his supervisor's knowledge, he asked the bishop about the take-over by State Security of a warehouse operated by Caritas, the Catholic charitable organization. He also asked Aranguren whether he would be willing to march with his flock next to Ileana Ros Lehtinen in Washington, D.C.

The bishop avoided giving clear answers, but Nogueras spent six hours at State Security headquarters, where he was accused, among other things, of ''religious proselitism.'' Why did Nogueras do something he obviously knew would get him in trouble? ''I was upset, frustrated. People told me in the street that no one listened to the stuff they put on official radio. I felt humillited.,'' said the reporter. ''I wantede a press that was pluralistic... so that people could assume a critical attitude, and I wanted to do my part.''

Nogueras' act of defiance cost both him and his mother their government jobs, which meant no money was coming into the home they shared with his three brothers. After almost a year of scraping a living from buying and selling hamburguers on the street, Nogueras started working with the Asociación de Periodistas Independientes de Cuba, run at the time by Nestor Baguer. There, he worked along with other independent journalists such as Roxana Valdivia. Without his own trasportation and unable to use public transport (he would have had to give his name at bus and train terminals), Nogueras started doing clandestine journalism.

His first important story was on the Juraguá Nuclear Power Plant, near Cienfuegos. Starting in 1993, Nogueras had been hearing disquieting things about the plant. ''They told me there was a lot of shoddyness, a lot of improperly executed welds, that the technicians were poorly trained, that basically the place would be dangerous if they ever got it running.''

Nogueras also heard about the warnings on Juragua being made in the United States by Congresswoman Ileana Ross Lehtinen and said he wanted to help her. In January, 1995, Nogueras broadcast his first report on Juraguá on Radio Martí and WCMQ in Miami. ''(Tomás García) Fusté (WCMQ's news director) praised my work and that stimulated me to go on,'' said Nogueras. However, one person who did not encourage him was Baguer.

''He told me the information needed to be verified and that I could go to jail,'' said Nogueras. ''I did my Juragua investigation because I believe what Oscar Wilde said about an idea not being worthy of the name unless it is a dangerous one. That's my professional philosophy.'' The Juraguá expose would be followed by others, such as the systematic grave robbery going on in Cuban cemeteries to obtain metal pins used in orthopedic surgery. ''I went to three cemeteries in different provinces and the gravediggers offered me everything, orthopedic pins, rings, necklaces, suits, shoes... they told me that sometimes they didn't even wait until the bodies had finished rotting before they cut them up to take the pins out.''

According to Nogueras, this report was sent to El Nuevo Herald but they did not publish it. Another sensational story written by Nogueras revealed that the Russian electronic espionage center at Lourdes, outside Havana, was being used to listen in on the phones of large American corporations for purposes of economic espionage. Nogueras got this story by developing relationships with members of the Cuban armed forces.

In October, 1995, Nogueras sneaked into a Cuban government press conference in Havana and said in front of a large group of foreign journalists that many people in Cuba approved of the Helms-Burton law, which increased economic sanctions against the Castro regime. State Security agents hustled Nogueras out of the press conference and took him six blocks away. In front of the School of Journalism of the University of Havana, they stripped him of all his belongings and kicked him savagely while passers-by protested agaisnt the abuse.

After spending five days in jail, Nogueras was deported to Cienfuegos. Six days later, he was back in Havana, telling Miami radio what had happened and saying the regime was dictatorial and despotic. When State Security thugs caught up with him again, they again administered a savage beating. Again, he was sent to Cienfuegos under guard. It was worth it just to have journalists ask Fidel Castro at the United Nations why he was putting Cuba's independent journalists in jail, said Nogueras.

Shortly after that, following a conversation with Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart broadcast over Miami radio, the chief of State Security in Cienfuegos said to Nogueras: ''You son of a bitch, if I ever catch you talking to one of those sons of bitches from the (U.S.) Congress again, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to throw you in the river.'' On July 28, 1997, Nogueras broadcast his last report from Cuba on Ninoska Pérez-Castellón's program on Miami radio station WQBA, La Cubanisima.

It was a story about corruption among high-ranking officials of the Ministry of the Interior in Cienfuegos, one of whom had been stealing money and drugs from Cuban hustlers and foreign tourists while another had been selling Cuban babies to foreigners. Shortly thereafter, a State Security official informed Nogueras: ''From this moment, there are only two roads for you in Cuba. You either leave or we are going to put you in prison.''

Copyright 1997, Exito Online, South Florida Interactive, Inc. and Sun-Sentinel Co.

Distributed by Cubanet