Notes &

The Geneva meeting of 1987 was a major importance. Though the resolution failed, the debate and deliberations awoke interest around the globe and many countries began seriously to worry. The resolution had failed by only one vote, and an inquiry by the UNH.R.C. carried the risk for Castro that U.S. charges would be supported. Should that happen, Cuba would find itself listed by the commission along with Iran, Afghanistan, El Salvador, South Africa and Chile as pariah countries.65 And another meeting of the UN commission was schedule for 1988.

The Geneva meeting and the new U.S. initiative also emboldened Bofill. In June 1987, he received a letter from President Ronald Reagan assuring him that the U.S. would continue to press for international investigations of human rights in Cuba. "As more facts become available to more persons, we expect increased support", Reagan wrote.66 Bofill decided the time was right to challenge Castro more directly. On October 23, 1987, Bofill issued a manifesto he called "An Appeal from Havana". Seizing upon the spirit of "solidarity" in the wind at the time, he addressed his manifesto to the leaders of Eastern European dissident movements, among them Laslo Rajk of Hungary, Andrei Sakharov of Russia, Lech Walessa of Poland and Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia. The occasion he chose was the second anniversary commemoration of the murder of a Polish priest, Jerzy Popieluzce, being held at the church of San Juan de Letran in the Havana suburb of El Vedado. More than two hundred people were present. About half of them were CCPDH sympathizers. The rest were church members and foreign press. Just before mass was begin, Bofill called the press together and read his statement, which began: "In this country, we are advocates for the return of the writ of habeas corpus, for the right of free expression of thought, and the full use of the right to dissent and to oppose the government. In this country, we advocate freedom for all Cubans".67 The remainder of the document constituted, in effect, a political platform for internal opposition to Castro’s government. When he finished reading, sixty-six CCPDH members signed the "Appeal".

Authorities took no action against any who had signed the manifesto. The whole matter was now too public, too much in the world’s eye for them to do that. And the 1988 meeting of the UNH.R.C. was impending. Instead, Castro sought to discredit Bofill and the CCPDH. "The organization is made up of no more than Bofill and maybe three other people, "Cuba’s foreign ministry spokesman, Omar Mendoza, told a Los Angeles Times reporter "This is not a respected organization, and it has no credibility. If you ask anyone on the street about the organization, no one knows of it".68

As the Genova meeting of the UNH.R.C. approached, Bofill and the CCPDH became ever more daring. A little over two weeks later, on November 11, Bofill and several CCPDH members, including Edmigio Lopez Castillo and Enrique Hernández, met at the home of CCPDH member Tania Diaz Castro to record a radio program for broadcast by Radio Marti. They called the program "Stalinism and Repression in Cuba". The moderator, Rolando Cartaya, a Cuban journalist, opened the program:

Dear listeners and fellow-citizens,

We have all met a private home in Havana as members of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, headed by Dr. Ricardo Bofill, in order to draw a balance of the human rights situation as experienced in our country this year. The fact, that we have been able to do so is, in itself, without precedent in the history of human rights activism in Cuba.69

The participants proceeded to discuss present and past situations vis-a-vis human rights in Cuba and what they hoped for in the future. The current Cuban situation was described poignantly. "There are two Cubas. One in the official nations that travels to other countries and appears in the official press, builds child care centers and performs extraordinary industrial feats. The other is the officious nation, the one that fills up the jails and is excluded from all political, cultural and social activities."70 The tape of the session was smuggled to Miami, and a month later, on December 10, Human Rights Day, it was broadcast to the Cuban people by Radio Marti.

Meanwhile, the CCPDH continued to stack up in the offices of the U.S., the UN, and various international human rights organizations, mounds of documented violations of human rights and the U.S. was making preparation for the Geneva meeting. Speaking at a luncheon at the University of Miami, UN Ambassador Vernon Walters predicted that he would soon get the necessary support in the UN for a resolution calling for an investigation in Cuba. "The Castro regime has had a free ride on human rights abuses for twenty-nine years". At the 1988 UNH.R.C. meeting, he said, "we will see who will stand up on behalf of the silent prisoners in Cuba".71

From Cuba, Bofill watched carefully as the Genova meeting convened. He had plans of his own, and timing was crucial. On February 14, 1988, just at the point that the diplomats in Genova had finished their preliminary business and were moving to consider the Cuban question, Bofill and the CCPDH opened the first independent, i.e. non-state sponsored, art exhibit held in Havana since the revolution. Unable to secure a public gallery, the CCPDH staged the exposition in the home of Committee members Carlos Valdes Dapena and Alicia Fernandez Arrate. It featured works by Afro-Cuban artist Raul Montesinos which explored the contemporary legacy of "Slavery in Cuba". Reinaldo Bragado Bretana, a Cuban poet, had written a sort of catalog commentary on the exhibit.72 Some two hundred people came to the opening. Among them were foreign journalist, diplomats from various embassies, representatives of Americas Watch, and a number of human rights lawyers from New York. Just before the opening ceremonies were to begin, Bofill called a press conference, as he had done at the Church of San Juan de Letran three and a half months before. This time, instead of issuing a statement, Bofill invited the press to interview several mothers in the crowd whose sons and daughters had been kidnapped, tortured, or executed. There was no police interference at the opening.

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Four days later, Bofill held a second showing of the exhibition. Word had spread, and it attracted even more diplomats, reporters, and foreign observers, than had the first showing. But this time Castro decided to act. A large crowd of what appeared to be outraged citizens gathered outside the house. Division General Jose Abrante, the Minister of interior and head of Cuban intelligence, was standing across the street. One of Abrante’s deputies came to the front door. Bofill met him there and told him that he and his friends were simply having a private gathering and that Cuban intelligence had not been invited. The deputy responded that there was a fierce mob outside that wanted to hurt the occupants and he was there to protect them. Bofill, who knew that the "fierce mob", was, in fact, largely Cuban intelligence agents dressed in civilian clothes, told the deputy to inform Jose Abrante that he must control the "mob".73 As some journalist and foreign diplomats left, they were harassed by the crowd. Inside the house, CCPDH members prepared for the worst. They shut all windows and anxiously waited for whatever might come. Their vigil lasted over four hours, when, finally, the crown dispersed.

There were no arrests, but during the weeks following the incident, Bofill and his activists were soon subjected to attacks in the Cuban media. During that time, NBS television reporter, Maria Shiver, visited Cuba and interviewed Fidel Castro, on February 21, 1988. She asked him why he was allowing a human rights monitoring group to exist in Cuba. Fidel shouted back, "No, what we have a tiny little group of counter-revolutionaries being manipulated by the American Interest Section. Here there are no human rights organizations". Shriver stood her ground. "But", she said, there is a Cuban Committee for Human Rights". Castro, annoyed by her insistence, answered that "an organization of liars and cheats is what we have. And they will never be legalized. That is their illusion". Shriver pressed on, "Then there has not been any change in respect to human rights in Cuba?". Irritated, Castro replied, "No. Here we maintain the absolute respect for Cuban citizens… There is no revolution in the world, no country in this world… where the respect for human rights is as great!".74

Meanwhile, in Genova, Cuba and the U.S. were engaged in a struggle. Once again the U.S. delegation was led by UN Ambassador Vermon Walters and Armando Valladares, who had recently been elevated from delegation member to U.S. Ambassador to the UNH.R.C. In contrast to the tough lobbying and pressure campaign the U.S. had waged in 1987, the 1988 U.S. campaign was much softer in tone. The United States’s thirteen-paragraph resolution was carefully worded so as to avoid antagonizing delegates reluctant to criticize Cuba. Without condemning the Castro government, it called for Cuba to respond to allegations about rights violations, including severe "limits on political freedom, arbitrary arrests, forced labor and the torture of political prisoners". It called for the UNH.R.C., which had no punitive power, to "study carefully" Cuba’s rights performance. The resolution did not rebuke or censure the Castro government. Instead, it simply asked the UN secretary general would then report his findings to the UNH.R.C. the next year.75

Castro had announced in 1987, before the U.S. resolution lost by one vote, that Cuba would not admit a UN team to investigate the island’s human rights record. But during the intervening year the pressures on him had, largely because of the work of Bofill and the CCPDH, become irresistible. Hence, at the 1988 Genova meeting the Cuban government gave in and invited the UNH.R.C.’s chairman, Alioune Sene of Senegal, and five members to come to Cuba and observe the human rights situation. Cuba’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Oscar Oramas Oliva, said Havana invited the UN delegation because, "We don’t have anything to hide".76 In fact, the invitation was a compromise worked out by Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Argentina to avoid a vote. Havana accepted the compromise because a vote condemning Cuban human rights abuses would compromise Castro’s standing in the third world.77 For its part, the U.S. won points by accepting the Latin American brokered proposal and a chance to have Castro’s abuses exposed. It was a good deal for the U.S. They traded a vote that was too close to call for an investigation that Ambassador Sene promised would be impartial, competent, and credible.78

The six-member UN delegation visited Cuba September 16-25, 1988. For Bofill and the members of CCPDH, the day to show the world the truth about Cuba’s human rights record had finally arrived. They handed a 110 page report outlining Cuban human rights abuses to the UN office in Havana.79

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Ricardo Bofill now decided to leave Cuba and to continue his work abroad. He asked for, and was granted an exit visa, named Gustavo Arcos Bergnes secretary general of the CCPDH, and on October 5, 1988 left for Frankfurt where the International Society For Human Rights had invited him to speak. He then traveled for four months, talking with world leaders and speaking to human rights organizations. His speaking tour culminate in an address to the United Nation Human Rights Commission in Genova in March, 1989.

On February 21, 1989, the UN delegation published its report on the Cuban human rights situation. The report showed in detail that liberties of speech, movement, and assembly were almost completely denied to Cuban citizens. The report listed the names of sixteen hundred Cuban who had been tortured, beaten, denied jobs for political reasons, or prevented from leaving the country.81 Bofill was enthusiastic about the findings. "This was something unprecedented", he recalls. "It was a sign that made us feel optimistic. It gave us hope that our people could have liberty."82

The seed of liberty and freedom of thought and expression were the roots of Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution. Since the triumph of the revolution, Castro, both at home and abroad, portrayed himself as a guardian of human rights and the champion of the "oppressed". This facade endured for decades, however, systematic violations of human rights began early under the Castro regime. Castro’s promise of social justice, democratic rule, and civil liberties proved illusory. In reality, Castro consolidated power, forfeited constitutional guarantees, and suppressed any form of opposition. Ultimately, and individual would come to symbolize to the world human rights community the survival of individual liberty and thought in Cuba. That individual was Ricardo Bofill Pages.

In response to Castro’s betrayal of the spirit of the Cuban Revolution and its people, Bofill began to challenge the Cuban leader’s human rights record. Initially, Bofill directed his objections to high-level Cuban authorities in the belief that his concerns would be viewed as constructive criticism and as a positive force for change. To his astonishment, the Cuban government unleased a series of punitive measures against him. Ever more convinced the validity of his criticism, Bofill embarked on a journey of conscience. This journey which had originated at the University of Havana continued through lengthy imprisonment, physical and mental torture, personal defamation, and the threat of death. It culminated in the achievement of his primary goal —informing the world community of Fidel Castro’s violations of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In reaching this objective, Bofill benefited from the convergence of his goals with those of the Reagan administration.

Adding a new dimension to previous administrations’ foreign policy initiatives aimed at Cuba, the Reagan administration determined to pursue a different course of action, and they found it in the cause of human rights— Castro’s Archilles heel. Their efforts were aimed at meeting two primary objectives. First, U.S. policy-makers wanted a UN investigative team to report would undermine Castro’s posture as a champion of human rights. Second, the U.S. hoped to enable an opposition movement to flourish inside the island to challenge Fidel Castro’s one party system. The first goal was achieved with the arrival in Cuba of a UN human rights investigative team in September 1988. The final report issued, as the result of this visit, raised serious questions concerning Cuban human rights abuses, although it did not outright condemn Cuba on violations. This report, coupled with documentation of Cuban human rights violations, supplied by Bofill and other human rights activists laid the groundwork for the condemnation by the UNH.R.C. which was ultimately delivered in March 1992. During these investigative years, Fidel Castro’s image as a champion of human rights was seriously tarnished. The second goal of creating political space for an opposition to challenge Castro’s power was partially met. An opposition movement did emerge inside Cuba; however, it has not been able to challenge Castro’s rule. Forty to fifty organizations have formed, perhaps with as many as several thousand members, but they have not posed a challenge to the Castro regime. However, the last chapters remain to be written on what effect the Cuban dissidents will have on the ultimate fate of Fidel Castro.