Visiting youths will be housed with Cuban families -- a great opportunity, as one site on the World Wide Web put it, to ``see how Cubans live and relax.'' Perhaps they'll learn the joys of ration cards, long lines, and hard-currency apartheid. But for a better dose of Cuban reality, they should visit Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina in the Combinado de Guantanamo prison -- and other young Cubans whose ``crimes'' have been to advocate for a free society.
Mr. Rodriguez, 32, was a founder in 1991 of the group Young People for
Democracy. In January he and group members Radames Garcia de la Vega, 27,
and Heriberto Leyva Rodriguez, 29, signed an open letter to El Comandante
Fidel Castro calling for academic freedom in Cuba's universities. Their
offense? They said that political beliefs shouldn't be grounds for
cashiering professors and students.
The letter also protested their arrests, jailings, death threats, beatings, trials without due process, and internal exile. It said: ``These methods, which we certify to be state terrorism, far from discouraging us, feed instead our anxiety for freedom. . . . ''
Amnesty International reports that Mr. Rodriguez Lobaina was arrested on April 8, tried two days later, and sentenced to 18 months in prison for ``disrespect'' and ``resisting authority.'' Mr. Garcia de la Vega was arrested on April 30, charged with ``disrespect to the commander in chief,'' then released on bail May 7. Amnesty seeks the release of Mr. Rodriguez Lobaina, whom it considers a prisoner of conscience, and urges that the charges against Mr. Garcia de la Vega be dropped.
The travails of these young dissident Cubans would give festival attendees good material for their discussions on democracy, education, neofascism, and human rights. But do they dare?
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald