Notes &

As a result of global attention focused on Bofill, now dubbed by Amnesty International a "Prisoner of Conscience", Ambassador Pierre Descamp, on behalf of French President Francois Mitterand, a socialist who had been sympathetic to Castro, petitioned Castro for Bofill’s release. Castro grudgingly complied and Bofill was "conditionally" released in May 1982. After leaving Combinado, "the most horrible detention of all my years in jail"39 he continued CCPDH’s campaign to expose Cuba’s human rights record. But this time the Cuban government kept a close eye on his work and increasingly harassed him.

On April 29, 1983, after a series of telephoned threats, that he believed came from government agents, Bofill became fearful for his life and fled to the French embassy. Cuban authorities immediately had the building surrounded by guards. The French objected, and a diplomatic crisis ensued between Paris and Havana. That evening, the French ambassador met with Cuban Vice-president Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, who gave assurances that Bofill would not be further harassed and would be given permission to leave the country if he wanted. The next day, Bofill left the embassy and went home.

But the Cuban government’s promises proved to be empty. The harassment of the Cuban dissident did not cease, and his visa request was denied.40 Castro did not want Bofill roaming the world making accusations against him. Better to keep him at home and control him, for by then, the dissident had international recognition. Castro reasoned he could keep a close watch on Bofill and his committee and discredit both by labeling them as a group formed and directed "by the American intelligence community, specifically the CIA".41

Five moths later on September 21, 1983, two French cinema journalists, Renaud Delkaourne and Dominique Nasplezes, asked Bofill for a filmed interview at his home in a suburb of Havana. Bofill agreed. The reporters described him as a "small, thin man who gave the impression of both fragility and force. His gestures were constantly nervous, as though he were always on guard. Only his gaze, amplified by large glasses, spoke of his determination". The journalist began the interview by asking, "What is your current situation?" "I demand", Bofill responded, "that the Cuban government respect my rights. My rights to move about freely, to be able to work, to not be under twenty-four-hour surveillance". He followed with a twenty minute denunciation of the Cuban government’s abuse of human rights.42

Upon leaving Bofill’s house, the reporters took a taxi. The taxi driver was visibly nervous because, while the reporters had been inside Bofill’s house, he had spotted police observers. At first nothing happened. Then, after they had driven a short way, a police car suddenly blocked the road. Two others sped up, surrounded them, arrested them, and took the journalists to immigration office. There, a Captain Antonio, who identified himself as an immigration official, asked them with whom they had been talking. When they told him, he shouted back: "Bofill is an enemy of the Revolution".43

Only after two days of lengthy interrogation was a French diplomat permitted to see the journalists. He asked a few polite questions, mumbled something about an evening plane to Paris, and made promises to return the next day. But five days went by before he appeared again, and then only to make more vague promises and disappear for good. As the interrogation resumed, it became obvious to the reporters that their inquisitors wanted confessions. "You will stay here until you tell us the truth", they were warned. "You are manipulated by Cuban opponents abroad and you have come here to spread anti-Castro propaganda. It is in your best interest to cooperate with us."44 Still the reporters refused to give in. Finally, after then days, Captain Antonio informed the Frenchmen that "the Commander-in-Chief, Fidel Castro, has decided that you shall not remain here. You will be released in the name of good relations between Paris and Havana".45 Immediately the reporters were put on a plane and sent home. Castro had made his point. He wanted to discourage all reporters from interviewing any human rights activists.

In the meantime, on September 24, three days after he had talked with the French reporters in his home, Ricardo Bofill was arrested and charged with anti-revolutionary activities. On October 23, 1983, he was put on trial, charged with "enemy propaganda and illicit association". He refused a court-appointed lawyer and chose to defend himself. "In any case", he said, "the outcome of this trial is obvious; I am already convicted".46 The trail was filmed by the state television in hopes of capturing a dramatic confession that could be shown both at home and abroad. But the cinematographers were disappointed. Bofill refused to recant. In his final statement, he proclaimed that, "the enemy of the revolution is the one who oppresses the people, the one who has ordered his masquerade, Castro himself".47 Bofill was convicted in December 1983, and sentenced to seventeen years in Combinado del Este Prison.

Within weeks of Bofill’s imprisonment, television and newspapers reported that he was suffering from "a cardiac disorder of the utmost seriousness". Bofill took this planted story to be an attempt on the part of the government "to cover itself in case an extremely rough interrogation"48 should result in his death. In fact, Bofill’s heart was in excellent condition. In late February 1984, state security officials moved Bofill from Combinado del Este to Villa Marista, an interrogation and detention center. He now began to think that his life was, indeed, in danger, that they might simply kill him. Instead, they subjected him to repeated beatings, solitary confinement, and a near-starvation diet.49

Castro faced a dilemma very like that faced by the governments of Russia and some East European countries vis-a-vis their dissidents. He would very much have liked to silence Bofill and the CCPDH by perpetual imprisonment or perhaps assassination. But he did not dare risk the alienation of allies or of world opinion that such action would bring. Consequently, he had to allow them to exist, though they were seriously tarnishing his image. Thus under mounting pressure from the international community generally and from France’s president, Francois Mitterand, specifically, Castro released Bofill "due to poor health" in August 1985.

Three months earlier, the U.S. government, largely as a result of lobbying efforts by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), established Radio Marti to transmit news and entertainment programming to Cuba. Castro raged that the station was a "violation of Cuba sovereignty … an act of aggression and a form of psychological warfare". 50 But CANF chairman, Jorge Mas Canosa, called Radio Marti "the first serious step n disarming Castro’s monopoly of information on the island"51 For Bofill and the CCPDH, Radio Marti represented protection. Frequently mentioned on the air, they became better known than ever, both in Cuba and abroad. Hence, it became ever more difficult for the Cuban government to silence or eliminate them.

Radio Marti also served Bofill as a recruiting device for new members of his organization. Actress Barbarita Jover and her husband, Ernesto Lopez Fundora, for example, first learned of Bofill on Radio Marti. "For the first time we heard a voice from within Cuba that expressed ideas which were in unison with our thoughts",52 says Jover who, along with her husband, joined the CCPDH.

Even so, Bofill continued to be harassed and threatened, and on August 27, 1986, he again fled to the French embassy. This time, Cuban authorities did not merely surround the compound as they had in 1983, but threatened to enter the embassy and arrest him. They held that Bofill was on parole and had no right to enter the embassy and that the French had no right to grant him political asylum.53 The French foreign ministry in Paris responded that any effort to arrest Bofill at the embassy "could cause a disruption in relations"54 between Paris and Havana. After five months of negotiation between the French and Cuban governments, on January 31, 1987, Bofill left the embassy. The French foreign minister issued a written statement from Paris stating that he was convinced that "Mr. Bofill will not be troubled after leaving the embassy, and that he will be able to lead a normal existence".55

During the moths Bofill was holed up in the French embassy, the Reagan administration had been making preparations to focus world opinion on human rights abuses in Cuba.56 The hard-hitting campaign was led by Vernon Walters, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN and a member of the U.S. delegation to the UNHRC, the exiled Cuban post Armando Valladares, who had served twenty-two years in Castro’s prisons. After his release in 1982, Valladares had written and published Against All Hope, a moving chronicle of his brutal experiences in prison.57 The book had become an international best-seller that focused world attention on Castro’s handling of political prisoners.

At the annual meeting of the UNH.R.C. in Geneva in early March 1987, Valladares raised the issue of Cuban human rights violations and stated "The United States" objective was to demonstrate that in Cuba torture, murder and violations of human rights is a systematic practice".58 After Valladares finished, Ambassador Walters continued. "Cuba has more political prisoners, per capita, than any other country in the world. And it is staggering to me to find that in the twenty-eight years of the Castro regime, the attention of the world has never been drawn to that".59 Ambassador Walters then made a point of noting that exposing Cuba’s dismal human rights record "is a very important matter of U.S. foreign policy".60 Shortly afterwards, the U.S. delegation introduced a resolution condemning "massive, systematic and flagrant abuses of human rights" by the Cuban government and calling for a UN inspection team to visit Cuba. In an impassioned plea for passage of the resolution, Ambassador Walters proclaimed that Cuba’s record of "brutality ranks proportionately among the great tragedies of this century", and concluded with a warning that a vote against the U.S. resolution would "aggravate a new crisis of perception from which the UN may be unable to recover".61

Cuba’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Raul Roa Kouri, responded that "any attempt by the United Nations Human Rights Commission to send an investigative team would be rejected outright".62 Despite intense pressure by the U.S. on Latin American and third world countries, the resolution failed. Most South American delegates voted against it. Though not pleased with Castro’s human rights record, some were skeptical about the U.S. account of the situation in Cuba.63 But the vote was as close as it could get, nineteen to eighteen. Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela voted against the resolution along with Cuba’s allies, Mexico and Nicaragua, and Brazil abstained. Costa Rica was the only Latin American nation to vote with the United States. Armando Valladares has reflected that "we knew that it would be very difficult to achieve a resolution against Cuba in 1987. But that was only the beginning. Because very year afterwards, in every international forum, we would denounce it, until the United Nations sent an investigative team to Cuba".64

 Up▲