Cuba’s Democracy Movement Has Little Hope for Human Rights Progress Under Obama Plan

Yale University history professor Carlos Eire grew up in Cuba and was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of the communist state in the early 1960s. But many of his relatives stayed behind. He’s been thinking of one of them in particular this past week, since President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro jointly announced a spy swap and their intention to normalize relations between their countries.

“If you go to church—and they watch; they know who goes, because on every block there’s a spy house—you can forget about having a nice job. And if you send your children to religious education of any kind you can forget about them having an education past the 8th grade,” said Eire, author of several books that have been widely translated but which are banned in his native land. “One of my aunts used to teach catechism, and she always had only about two or three children, and their parents are making that difficult choice, putting their future lives in jeopardy, putting them in religious education. She had to report to the local spy committee on the block which children attend. This was from the 1970s into the 1990s.

“When Pope John Paul II visited Cuba [in 1998], suddenly, from one week to the next, she had 30 kids in class,” he continued. “But within a month or so she was back down to two to three, because the spy committee went out and said to the parents, ‘If you keep sending your kids to her house, this is what’s going to happen to you.’”

Eire and other sympathizers of the Cuban democracy movement expressed skepticism that the deal announced last week will be any good for the human rights situation in Cuba. Though Eire’s aunt’s experience was during the 1970s through the 1990s—and although Cuba maintains that there is freedom of religion—it is still difficult to practice religion, advocates said in interviews over the past few days.

“The US government and American churches must constantly press for greater religious freedom,” said Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.  “The churches are still tightly restricted in the areas of religious education, broadcasting, communications, and human rights advocacy.  Like others, they are prevented by the state in having a normal role in civic society.”

“The government tolerates the Church as long as it doesn’t interfere with politics,” said Enrique Pumar, associate professor of sociology at The Catholic University of America. Pumar sees some change in the situation from the days when he was growing up in Cuba, but there is a need for much more progress.  “I was an altar boy there in the late 1960s,” he said. “We were harassed. They had block parties with loud music right in front of church so we couldn’t hear the Mass; they prohibited us from ringing bells so people would know when to come to church.”

But in spite of any progress, he said, the government has “infiltrated the Church” and will “never allow” the Church one of its strongest desires—to run its own schools and universities.

“I am pessimistic” that the deal will “make a dent” in the human rights situation, Pumar said. “We lost a great opportunity" in agreeing to proceed toward normalizing relations without first insisting on concessions. "We should follow [former Secretary of State] Warren Christopher’s solution and say it’s all up to the Cubans: you make reforms, we’ll change our policy accordingly.”

Eire, too, would like to see the US insist on conditions before any further change, such as lifting the economic embargo, “and say, ‘You allow political parties. You allow labor unions, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press. Stop harassing people who disagree with the government. Have an election.’ There are all sorts of conditions that could be put on this deal. There’s been nothing like that,” he said.

Alberto de la Cruz, managing editor of the Babalublog website, was even more pessimistic.  “This deal sends a message to the Cuban government that the US doesn’t care about human rights,” said de la Cruz,  who was born in the US of parents who fled the communist revolution in Cuba. “The first thing they tell you if you want to do business with them is ‘You do not bring up or demand anything about human rights,’” he said.

Some observers who welcomed the news of the deal last week, including representatives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, pointed out that engagement with the Cuban regime could lead to quicker change than isolation. Some commentators made a comparison with China, where tourism and international trade has exposed the Chinese to the democratic West.

“People say once you get tourists in there they’ll see how wonderful capitalism is and they’ll stand up and take down the government,” de la Cruz noted. “I ask: ‘What is it about American tourists that English and Canadian tourists can’t do?’” he said, noting that Canada and the UK have allowed tourism to Cuba for more than 20 years. “There are 2 million tourists on the island already. Besides, the entire tourist industry is run by the Cuban military. Your entire day is controlled by the Cuban government. You go to their museums, you stay in their hotels, you go to their shows. You tour the parts of Havana they want you to tour. And if you try to visit dissidents…. One guy emailed me saying, ‘I wasn’t watched by the government at all.’ I asked, ‘Well, how many dissidents did you visit?’ He said none. I said ‘Well if you tried, they wouldn’t have to watch you, they just watch the dissident, which they do already. I guarantee you, if you had visited a dissident, you would have gotten a visit.’”

In announcing the changes, President Obama said that it’s time to try a different approach, as the break in relations for more than 50 years and the embargo have not produced the desired results. “These 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked,” he said. “It’s time for a new approach.”

“But the alternative they’re proposing has been in used by Europe and Canada for the past 20 years—engagement in business with the Castro regime—and that hasn’t done anything either,” de la Cruz countered. “Arrests of human rights activists in Cuba have quadrupled since 2010.”

In fact,  just days before the deal was announced, on December 10, International Human Rights Day, Cuban dissidents took to the streets for demonstrations, said both Pumar and de la Cruz. Hundreds were arrested.  Some were beaten.

For de la Cruz, the incident also highlighterd the lack of press freedoms and the ability of Cuba to intimidate foreign journalists. Rather than reporting on the arrests, he said, AP and Reuters ran safe stories on the world’s largest cigar and a bartender competition.

In spite of intimidation, several groups of dissidents continue to be outspoken. The so-called Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White—the wives of jailed dissidents—attend Mass every Sunday at a church in Havana and march quietly, praying the rosary.

“Hundreds of times, they’ve been set upon by the Castro regime, his military, his thugs,” said Margaret L. Petito, who runs the Washington, DC-based Friends of Rule of Law in Ecuador foundation. “More of them have died, been raped, tortured, in and out of prison. That continues. There’s no pledge by Raul to reform anything.”

And, Petito lamented, there are no mechanisms in the Obama deal to ensure progress in the human rights arena. “That’s not part of the plan. That is the hole in all of this. We gave away a simple matter that’s called leverage.”

Although Human Rights Watch welcomed Obama’s historic decision to overhaul US policy toward Cuba as a "crucial step toward removing a major obstacle to progress on human rights,” the organization pointed out the problems that perdure.

The Cuban government continues to repress individuals and groups who criticize the government or call for basic human rights," it said in a statement. "Arbitrary arrests and short-term detention have increased dramatically in recent years and routinely prevent human rights defenders, independent journalists, and others from gathering or moving about freely. Detention is often used pre-emptively to prevent people from participating in peaceful marches or meetings to discuss politics. Detainees are often beaten, threatened, and held incommunicado for hours or days.”

Update, Dec. 29: A State Department spokeswoman responded to a query for this article:

John Burger is news editor for Aleteia’s English edition.