August, 1997
The following editorial appeared in The Washington Post:

A DRAMA of democracy and courage is playing out in Cuba. In mid-July four dissidents petitioned the government -- through the lone channel available to them, the international press -- for a broad program of political and economic liberalization. The regime promptly took the occasion of some unexplained Havana hotel bombings, which the four condemned, to arrest them, along with a Cuban journalist, for ``counter-revolutionary activities.'' The evident purpose was to associate independent speaking with bombings tied, but with no show of proof, to exile ``terrorist'' groups in Miami.

This is not just the familiar tale of an ugly communist police regime at work. The four -- Felix Bonne, Rene Gomez Manzano, Vladimiro Roca, and Martha Beatriz Roque -- were performing a particular service. As members of a small dissidents' working group unbeholden to the communist authorities, they meant to present to the forthcoming Communist Party congress in Havana a picture of contemporary Cuba's current difficulties as essentially self-made, not, as Fidel Castro likes to say, American-made. In a free society, they would be accepted as the opposition.

It is hard to read the document The Homeland Belongs to Us All for which these activists are now imprisoned without asking if they do not represent the wave of a democratic Cuba's future. They seek ``a consensus freely reached by the citizenry . . . If, as its leaders assert, the citizenry in general supports the Communist Party, there is no reason not to hold internationally supervised, free elections, which would serve to silence all the detractors of the system.''

At the end of July the Havana regime put on one of those international youth congresses that are a staple of communist diplomacy. One can imagine what version of Cuban reality that the guests heard from their hosts. It is a pity that they did not also hear the version of the dissidents so that they could use their presence in Cuba to test some of the differences. The Cuban people deserve no less an opportunity themselves.