"...I feel even more hate for this tyranny"

Cuban Rocker Critical of Castro Out of Jail, Fined $28

HAVANA — A Cuban punk rocker known for his raunchy lyrics criticizing Fidel Castro was convicted of public disorder Friday, but freed after a court dismissed a more serious "social dangerousness" charge that could have sent him to prison for four years.

Following a two-hour trial, the court ordered Gorki Aguila to pay $28 and released the 39-year-old singer.

"I am very proud of all the people who have supported me, and I feel even more hate for this tyranny," Aguilar told reporters upon his release.

The fine is big money in a country where nearly everyone, Aguila included, works for the state and takes home an average of $19.50 per month.

But Aguila would have faced far more severe punishment had he been convicted of "social dangerousness," which the government defines as violating "communist morality." That charge is often used to detain would-be offenders before they have a chance to commit a crime.

Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation took the unusual step of attending the trial — which was open to Aguila's father and band mates as well as about 10 of his supporters, but closed to reporters.

"The prosecution asked for a fine," said Sanchez, whose group is not recognized but largely tolerated by Cuba's communist government. "Fortunately, there will be no more time in prison."

Aguila was arrested Monday as his band, Porno para Ricardo, rehearsed at the modest Havana apartment he shares with his father. The case sparked international outcry but caused little stir on the island, where the band has only a small but devoted following.

Aguila was previously arrested in 2005 on drug charges that he says were fabricated because authorities objected to his music.

Founded 10 years ago, the band — whose name means "Porno for Ricardo" — is known for ridiculing the communist system, especially Castro, 82 and ailing, and his younger brother Raul, who became president in February. Its songs at one time were broadcast on state radio and TV, but the group was later banned and has resorted to small, occasional concerts in underground venues.

With long and wild curly black hair and healthy stubble, Aguila grinned and waved to supporters as officers loaded him in a police cruiser and drove him home. He will be allowed to pay his fine over time.

Aguila said Cuban authorities "want to teach me a lesson every chance they get," but were shocked by the international uproar. "There were a lot of repercussions, and they were very afraid."

Sanchez said Friday before the trial that the "dangerousness" charge usually results in jail time for people who have not committed any crime.

"Because of 'social dangerousness,' thousands and thousands of Cubans are in prison," he said.

Band Guitarist Ciro Diaz said authorities told Aguila's state-assigned attorney he was arrested for being "an anti-social."

"His lawyer said he talked to the prosecutors, and that a judge told them this was a political trial," Diaz said outside the courthouse. "That this was about an undesirable in the neighborhood who made songs with lyrics against the system, against Fidel and everything else."

Diaz said he and a friend were roughed up and arrested by state agents the previous night after they held up a handwritten sign reading "Gorki" at an open-air concert by legendary Cuban singer Pablo Milanes. He said they were treated for minor injuries and then interrogated for hours before being released without charge.

Gathered outside the courthouse before the trial were human rights observers from the Canadian and Dutch embassies, as well as an official from the U.S. Interests Section.

Blogger Yoani Sanchez — who has won international acclaim for her criticism of the government — was granted access to the trial, which she called "an inquisition."

"It's a message to all those who have not yet dared to criticize things but were thinking about it," she said.

GOVERNMENTS OUGHT NOT BE WITHOUT CENSORS AND WHERE THE PRESS IS FREE NONE EVER WILL

Cuban Newspaper Pushes Beyond Party Line
by Tom Gjelten
Tom Gjelten/NPR
In an unprecedented move, reporters at Cuba's Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) are being encouraged to investigate what's not working in their country.

The newspaper recently ran a three-part series on Cuba's agricultural sector — and why, despite all its farmland, the country has to import so much food.
Read part 1 of Juventud Rebelde's series on Cuban agriculture (in Spanish).

All Things Considered, May 28, 2008 · In Cuba, the daily newspapers are all owned and run by the government or the Communist Party. For years, speeches by Fidel Castro were splashed across Page 1, and barely a critical word was published. But Fidel's brother Raul, who has taken over as president, is now allowing more debate in the Cuban press, and one party-affiliated newspaper is rising to the challenge.
Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) was founded in 1965 as the newspaper of the Communist Youth movement in Cuba. Throughout its existence, the publication mostly has featured whatever dreary "news" party leaders wanted published.
But in recent months, Juventud Rebelde reporters have been encouraged to think like journalists and investigate what's not working in their country.

The newspaper recently ran a critical three-part series on Cuban agriculture. Reporter Dora Perez and a colleague spent weeks talking to farmers and farm workers across the country. They wanted to find out why Cuba, with all its rich farmland, has to import so much food.

"[We heard] nothing but complaints," Perez says. "Our report was very critical. We're bad in agriculture, and we have to say so."
Three months later, Perez followed up with another investigative series, this one on education in Cuba. She found out that many Cuban parents were so unhappy with the quality of their kids' schooling that they were hiring private tutors — something once unthinkable here.

An Unprecedented Approach

For years, Fidel Castro told Cubans that their problems were the result of the U.S. trade embargo, the loss of Soviet aid or globalization: There was always an excuse. But Herminio Camacho, deputy editor of Juventud Rebelde, says it's time for Cuba to acknowledge its own failings.

"These articles aim at raising people's awareness," Camacho says. "People need to know that things don't have to be like this here. We're bringing up problems that can't be blamed on our shortages, or on outside forces, or the embargo, or the world situation."

For a Cuban communist newspaper, this editorial approach is unprecedented. Phil Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area think tank, is impressed by what he has seen in Juventud Rebelde over the past two years — even though the scope is limited and the paper is still under government control.

"You now have Cuban journalists actually going out and documenting facts and contradicting official versions of the facts," Peters says.
In one notable example, Juventud Rebelde reporters determined that Cuban authorities were grossly underreporting the number of unemployed youth, especially in the countryside. In one province, they found it was 18 times higher than what the government claimed.

Habits Hard to Break as Journalists Seek Independence

Such stories are still the exception in Juventud Rebelde, not the norm. More common are the stories that simply quote government functionaries uncritically. Editor Camacho says he and his reporters are still finding their way.

"We've made progress, but we have a ways to go, because our reporters have been conditioned to think in a certain way," he says. "They have inertia in their thinking. This kind of journalism we're trying to do is hard for us. Throughout our whole lives, we've done it in a different way."

In an effort to break old journalistic habits, Camacho and his fellow editors have eliminated the beat structure at Juventud Rebelde. Reporters now are generalists, not specialists.

"Journalists who take charge of one particular issue can lose their broader vision," Camacho explains. "They develop a close relationship with whoever they're covering, because they see them day after day. It makes it harder to be critical. In order to do this kind of journalism, we had to change that structure."

Stopping Short of Challenging Communist Tenets

What's notable is that Camacho is thinking like a newspaper editor in a democratic society and not as a propaganda boss, which is the role editors in communist countries have more typically played.
His paper stops well short of challenging the ideology of Cuban communism. But for a party organ even to raise sensitive questions could have unforeseeable consequences in a tightly controlled totalitarian state. Some of the paper's recent reporting touches on key elements of the socialist system, such as the state-owned companies that now control every aspect of economic life in Cuba.
"Their reporters went out and documented that a lot of the state enterprises just do not work," notes Peters of the Lexington Institute. "[They found] that there's no functioning supply system and that the enterprises actually exploit and cheat Cuban consumers. It was unbelievable."
Peters, who has been reading the Cuban press for years, says such reporting never appeared during the time Fidel Castro ruled Cuba.
"If Fidel Castro talked about these state enterprises, they were paragons of socialist virtue," Peters says. "It was, 'This is what we live for.' He would always contrast [Cuban] state enterprises with the exploitations that occur in capitalist societies."

Fidel Castro Expresses Displeasure

Indeed, Fidel Castro apparently doesn't much like the pro-reform ideas aired recently in Juventud Rebelde and a few other media. In a newspaper column published last month under the title "Do Not Make Concessions to Enemy Ideology," Castro lashed out at critics of Cuban socialism. "People must be very careful with everything they say," he warned.
Castro, whose mental and physical condition remains a mystery, said he was responding to a comment in one of Cuba's media outlets. He didn't say which one, and Juventud Rebelde editor Camacho says he got immediately nervous it was his paper.
"I'll admit it," Camacho says, "the first reaction I had was to worry. This was Fidel pointing his finger at someone. He's not president of the country anymore, but we still see him as the leader of the revolution."
In discussing Castro's commentary, Camacho was noticeably uncomfortable, speaking slowly and stopping several times to choose his words carefully. For nearly 50 years, Fidel Castro has been all-powerful in Cuba, able on his own authority to squash careers or send people to prison for the rest of their lives.
"For us, a criticism from Fidel is …" Camacho begins, but he does not finish the sentence. "It's more than just the fear. Among other things, we feel in some way like we must be violating his wishes."
Following Castro's critical column, Camacho says he and his fellow editors resolved to be more "responsible." A fully reported article on the shortcomings of the economic reform program was not published.

Despite Skeptics, Paper Forges Ahead with New Direction

Some writers who have broken their ties with the government are skeptical that Juventud Rebelde can be much of a force for change. Independent journalist Reinaldo Escobar, who writes an opposition blog in Cuba, says he is impressed by some of the reporters working at the paper. But he does not see them as allies in the fight for democracy and free expression in Cuba.
"Any professionally aware journalist could write something that coincides with what I'm saying, but they wouldn't be doing so intentionally," he explains. Escobar is working deliberately for political change in Cuba. The Juventud Rebelde reporters are just trying to be journalists.
Shortly after Perez wrote her series on education in Cuba, she got a congratulatory e-mail from Adelaida Fernandez, a prominent Cuban writer. Fernandez had delivered a highly critical speech on Cuban education at a convention of Cuban writers and artists, and in her opening words she cited the Juventud Rebelde stories by Perez.
"I was very proud," Perez says. "One of the best things about being a journalist is when you know that what you write actually reaches people and moves them." It was hardly a radical thought, but coming from a reporter at a Communist Party newspaper in Havana, it was noteworthy.

A DANGEROUS OLD MAN

A Mercenary and Dangerous Old Man By Leonel Alberto Pérez Belette Guilleuma Alfredo Rodriguez at his home in Havana / photo of the author Click on a photo to enlarge Havana (May 2008 – Cubanet) Members of the political police harassed an 80 year old opponent in his own home to prevent him from blemishing the festivities of the first of May. Alfredo Guilleuma Rodriguez has become a "danger" for the authorities of the state. So much so that the State decided to place to two police officers and a member of the Committee of Defense of the Revolution (CDR) on his doorstep with the objective to stop him from leaving his dwelling on May Day.

According to him, he was told that he would not be able to leave while the parade was being performed. In spite of their threats, the elder was not scared because he needed to leave to find something for his grandson’s breakfast. After an exchange of words, in which he was branded a mercenary, the authorities were limited to following him to where he was going. Earlier, the leader of the police sector had already notified him that he was not going to permit him to moved around freely.

Why are they so infuriated with a grandfather that still needs a cane to travel? Guilleuma Rodriguez has spent his life fighting against tyrannies and as a true revolutionary. He fought against Hatchet, then against Batista and now against the ones in charge of Cuba.

Before the arrival of Fidel Castro to power, Guilleuma belonged to the revolutionary directorate of March 13th Movement, to the Triple A Movement of the Authentic Party led by Aureliano Sánchez Arango and Dr. Carlos Prío Socarrás. Later he became involved in the July 26th Movement. It almost cost him his life on several occasions, especially after the first failed attack against the dictator Fulgencio Batista on 5th Avenue in Havana. Two traitors betrayed the group by leaking that the weapons were hidden in a hotel in the Caballo Blanco (White Horse) neighborhood, and the tyrant, once notified, deviated from his habitual route. The friends of Guilleuma that were there were Julián Ortega Thorny, Osvaldo Díaz Sources, Abelardo Rodriguez Melero, the Galecian Lavandero ( a Commander from the Spanish Civil War), Arístides Viera (Mengolo), Sergio González (The Healer), the brothers Montalvo and Machado Amejeiras. Due to a setback, he did not participate in the Presidential Palace robbery on March 13, 1957, and therefore could not participate in the prison break where Lavandero died. Instead, he became a prisoner in the Castle of the Prince, in the Bureau of Intelligence (BI), in the 17 station in the Mariano neighborhood and in the ninth police station directed by Esteban Ventura.

After 1959, he chose to be a simple waiter at the Hotel Riviera. In 1990, the aging Alfredo retired from his work life and his odyssey began.

“I was born fighting” he says “against the contradictions of the political system imposed upon this country, but even by then these contradictions were insurmountable and they are intensifying every day.”

Little by little he became a dissident and later part of the opposition. Already at his age, he says that he had nothing to lose; all he could want for his children and his grandson was for them to not have to give in before any such tyranny.

He joined the Cuban Liberal Movement (MLC) directed by Pedro Ordoñez, who today lives in exile. He confronted the figureheads of the state to commemorate the International Day of the Human Rights, in the park Villalón, in 2007, and in 2008; occasions where he was placed under arrest. Later, he began supporting the Ladies in White. Various “acts of repudiation” have been carried out against him, but the majority of the neighbors have already refused to participate in such things. The political police offered him a job helping to pack bags in one of the “divisas” (foreign currencies) shops close to his house; work for which they would pay him some convertible 20 pesos a month, and, more the point, that would maintain his pension. All of this in exchange for renouncing his opposing activities.

The state tried to brand Alfredo Guilleuma as a "mercenary being paid by the Yankees" for defending Cuban’s civil rights and their dreams of social justice. This alleged mercenary is an old man with a young spirit that lives in extreme poverty in a room that includes his bathroom, kitchen and a barbecue in rundown building in Vedado. His only incomes are the 202 pesos from his retirement pension. From that he has to pay 57 pesos a month - after buying the only ‘luxury’ item in his home, his refrigerator, on credit, his part of the electricity and his other services. In the end, this does not leave him enough to eat and to dress himself.

To top it off, he is responsible for raising his grandson, after his son was threatened with being put in jail for the crime of being "socially dangerous" for not working for the State.

WITH CELL PHONES NOW LEGAL IN CUBA....THIS PRISONER CAN'T MAKE A PHONE CALL

this is the translation of the call a prisoner made to a human rights activist:

MAY 20, 2008:
SPEAKING: JUAN CARLOS GONZALEZ LEIVA ATTEMPTS TO INTERVIEW JOSE DANIEL FERRER GARCIA WHO IS IN PRISON IN CUBA

THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSLATED TEXT OF THE PHONE CALL AND MR. FERRER GARCIA'S ATTEMPTS TO SPEAK TO GONZALEZ LEIVA

WE REPUDIATE VIOLENCE AND HATE AND CALL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE...THOSE OF US WHO FIND OURSELVES IN PRISON DEFENDING ALL RIGHTS....NO....WHAT??

DANIEL FERRER (DF) AT THIS POINT IS INTERRUPTED BY AN OFFICIAL (A GUARD) AS HE SPEAKS TO GONZALEZ LEIVA (GL):


DF: THERE IS AN "OFFICIAL" HERE WHO IS POSSIBLY NEW HERE AND IS PLAYING THE JOKER AND DOESN'T WANT ME TO READ OUT LOUD. ARE YOU RECORDING ME?

GL: YES YES YES

DF: THIS GUY IS BEING THE IMPERTINENT ONE, BUT THIS ISN'T GONNA BE THE SAME AS THEY'RE USED TO IN OTHER OCCASSIONS...CALL SECURITY CALL WHOEVER...I'M NOT MOVING FROM HERE UNTIL I FINISH THIS CALL/RECORDING AND FROM HERE I WILL NOT MOVE AND IF YOU PULL ME THE PHONE COMES WITH ME...GO GET WHOM YOU WILL...AND DOWN WITH THE DICTATORSHIP, DOWN WITH COMMUNISM, DOWN WITH FIDEL AND LONG LIVE CUBA FREE!

DF: YOU ARE NOT TAKING MY PHONE....YOU'RE NOT PASSING ME FROM THIS POINT....PERMISSION! NOTHING! PERMISSION? NOTHING!
AIN'T NOTHING DOING! GO GET WHO YOU WANT. I AM TIED TO THIS PHONE. TO GET ME MOVING FROM HERE YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO KILL ME!

(GUARD IS HEARD IN THE BACKGROUND ARGUING WITH DF)

GUARD: NO MAN, NO ONE'S GONNA KILL YOU.

DF: OVER MY DEAD BODY ARE YOU GETTING ME OUT OF HERE

GUARD: WE'RE NOT GOING TO KILL YOU.

DF: I'M NOT LETTING GO OF THIS PHONE. THIS IS MY LIFE MY FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.NO ONE TAKES THAT AWAY FROM ME.

GUARD: NO BUT BY THE PHONE....

DF: BY PHONE WHAT? I'VE BEEN IN PRISON FIVE YEARS SPEAKING THE TRUTH ABOUT (CUBAN) PRISONS AND I AM GOING TO CONTINUE SPEAKING ABOUT THEM. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'RE NEW IN THIS PRISON OR IF YOU CAME FROM THE PLANET MARS. BUT I'M JOSE DANIEL FERRER GARCIA (indistinct) WILL CONTINUE TO STATE VIA TELEPHONE WHAT GOES ON IN PRISON IN CUBA.

GUARD: ...ANOTHER PLANET

DF: I'M PRETTY SURE...BUT FROM THIS POINT I WILL NOT LET GO OF THIS PHONE...YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO KILL ME TO TAKE THIS PHONE FROM ME

GUARD: NO MAN, THERE IS NO NEED IN KILLING YOU

DF: NO, BUT YOU'LL DO SOMETHING, I DON'T KNOW BUT I DO KNOW I WILL MAINTAIN THIS PHONE IN MY HAND. I AM NOT LETTING GO OF THIS PHONE

GL: THAT'S WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO WITH THESE TYRANTS DANIEL

DF: indistinct.....NO, THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE TO GET REINFORCEMENTS I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE GOING TO DO

GL: DON'T LET THEM COUNT THIS TIME AGAINST YOU

DF: NO I HAVEN'T BEGUN TO SPEAK YET...IT'S 25 MINUTES TO SAY WHAT I AM GOING TO SAY...WHAT I WANT TO SAY. OF COURSE I WON'T LET IT COUNT...I HAVEN'T BEGUN TO READ YET. THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO SILENCE JOSE DANIEL, THAT'S KILLING HIM

GUARD: WE WON'T KILL YOU YOU GOT 25 MINUTES ONLY. (indistinct) FINE. BUT LISTEN TO ME

DF: I WON'T LISTEN TO YOU

GL: TELL HIM THAT YOU'LL LISTEN AFTER YOU FINISH SPEAKING. TELL HIM TO GET LOST

INDISTINCT...

SOME OTHER MAN INTERRUPTS AND STATED "I'VE BEEN INFORMED OF THIS SITUATION..."

DF: HE (THE GUARD) SHOULD HAVE NEVER COME...THERE ARE TWO (PERSONS?) THAT ARE DESIGNATED TO GIVE ME THE CHANCE TO USE THE PHONE...IF (HE?) DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT THE RIGHT TO ALLOW ME TO SPEAK TO SAY WHAT I WANT TO SAY, WHAT I THINK, FEEL, NO? IF HE DOESN'T KNOW IT LET HIM FIND OUT...

ANOTHER MAN SPEAKS IN THE BACKGROUND.

DF: I WILL STAY HERE WITH YOU. I WON'T LET GO OF THIS PHONE AND I AM NOT GOING WITH YOU.

GUARD: indistinct YOU HAVE TO LET GO!

DF: NO! FROM HERE I AM NOT MOVING UNTIL I USE MY 25 MINUTES WILL NOT LEAVE...IN WHAT I FIND CONVENIENT... I WON'T LEAVE

GUARD: HANG UP THE PHONE

DF: I WON'T HANG UP THE PHONE...YOU WILL NOT PUT HANDCUFFS ON ME...YOU WILL NOT PUT HANDCUFFS ON ME...YOU WILL NOT.. DOWN WITH THE DICTATORSHIP!...DOWN WITH COMMUNISM!....YOU....


AT THIS POINT DANIEL'S PHONE WAS TAKEN FROM HIM AND HE WAS BEATEN MERCILESSLY BY THE GUARD

THERE HAVE BEEN HUNDREDS OF ACTS OF REPUDIATION AGAINST PEACEFUL ANTI-GOVERNMENT ACTIVISTS SINCE JAN 2008 IN CUBA

Guantánamo, Cuba. May 20, 2008. Cuban Democratic Directorate. Political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer García, held at Guantánamo Provincial Prison, was attacked by guards as he attempted to give a firsthand report on prison conditions to activist Juan Carlos González Leiva. The guard attempted to cut the prisoner’s telephone connection, producing a confrontation during which Ferrer shouted slogans against the dictatorship and in favor of freedom for Cuba. The connection cut off abruptly.

Ferrer García subsequently managed to reestablish communication and explained what had happened: “They took the telephone from my arms by force, they started to twist my arms around to my back. They twisted them in such a way that my wrists are… and great pain in my shoulders. They nearly stuck my twisted arms to the nape of my neck. Then they threw me to the ground and dragged me all along the ground in that position. I do not know how my arms did not break.”

Ferrer García added that they had taken him to the prison’s command office, and that he was subsequently able to return to the telephone. Just as he was explaining this to González Leiva, he was once again interrupted by the same guard, who abruptly cut the connection. Before they drew him away from the telephone, Ferrer García said that if he were not allowed to use the telephone, he would become plantado, or assume a rebellious and absolutely uncooperative attitude in protest.

"If there is another issue with the telephone, there will be no understanding. I will begin my protest anew then. Juan Carlos, are you listening to me? I will call you in 10 minutes. If I do not call you, José Daniel is in solitary confinement or José Daniel was beaten to death, because as long as José Daniel has his way of thinking, no one will violate his rights.”

González Leiva, who transmitted the dramatic recording abroad, stated that “it is necessary… that this recording be spread around the whole world. These are the changes that the Cuban government is carrying out.”

González Leiva added that “the European Union [and] the international community have meetings coming up, and the measures imposed against Fidel Castro’s dictatorship, in this case the Castro brothers’, Raul Castro’s, should not be suspended, should not be removed. This is what is happening: repression of freedom of expression, repression of the right of Cubans to express themselves both in a prison, and on the outside, the largest prison of all.”

....AND JUST WHO IS THE U.N.'S MAJOR FUNDER?

March 21, 2008

Secret Pacts
Juan González Febles
March 2008

HAVANA, Cuba, (wwww.cubanet.org) - The Cuban government has recently promoted its decision to sign a series of pacts with the United Nations. The commitments covered are in areas as sensitive as can be - civil law, along with political, cultural and social rights. The most extraordinary thing about this event was that nothing has been spread around regarding what these documents mean inside Cuba. As a result, the people don’t know what the Cuban government has signed and how it will affect them.

Cuba has been a signatory of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights since 1948. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of activists imprisoned for defending the letter and the spirit of this document. Furthermore, neither the Cuban state controlled media, nor any government officials, have clarified what impact the singing these new agreements will have on daily life on the island.

The new pacts seem like censored material or for future censorship. Perhaps we find ourselves in the dawn of another new wave of arrests classified as "fraternal beat-downs" for trying to bring to light what the Cuban government has agreed to and hidden from the public. Officially, the government has not said a word about the content of what was signed and this in itself is very significant.

Journalist Rose Miriam Elizalde conducted an interview with one of the youths that quizzed the President of the National Assembly, which was published in Granma’s digital edition. Nothing was in the tabloid version available to the people, not even a mention of the topic. All appeared normal in the government’s handling and obscuring of the truth.

In another instance, the decree allowing the sale of an extensive range of electric goods to the population, including computers and cell phones, was also realized only in the digital form of Granma for foreigners. It pretended that the people, denied free access to internet, would remained in the dark about this, like so much other information. However, less than 48 hours after the government made a calculated proclamation about this new measures, the people were already making comments on the streets. The best one being why "do these people hide the ball?”

The answer is simple. The government knows that it wasn’t the promotion of perestroika that put an end to communism in the old Soviet Union. What finished it was glasnost, period. It is exactly this type of informational transparency that the Castrist regime fears.

The first thing that should be required from the Cuban government, through the pressure from those European external factors that are accompanying the Cuban regime in its difficult process of transition to a more adequate form of government, is simply transparency. These forces say loud and clear that the people have the right to know. We refer to "European external factors," because the regime does not respect the Cuban people. Also, as a result of the unfeasibility of the government’s economic direction, it has placed itself in the difficult and shameful position of having to accept what never they would have accepted in the past. All for the sake of preserving support for the future and potential leaders that are holding up their absurd system.

The secret pacts should stop being secret and the "liberalizing measures" that the government adopts should be given to the population in due time and in the right form, the immediacy is required everywhere. There should be no restrictions on access to such information.

The students of the University of Computer Sciences (UCI) and of the 'Brothers Martínez Tamayo' School of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, who download internet works of this type, read them and distribute them among themselves, have an incentive to question like friends the next bureaucrat visiting them.

The secret internet users that check websites with Cuban themes, who download, print and distribute the "hottest" pieces point towards future demands. We have already had enough of the excessive secrecy and of the secret agreements being made behind the backs of the people. Now is the moment for transparency.

Translation by Scott Hudson (People in need)

ALLEGED U.S. CRIMINALS HARBORED IN CUBA

Aging U.S. fugitives live as exiles in Cuban neighborhoods

Aging U.S. fugitives live as exiles in Cuban neighborhoods
Alleged criminals aging, miss U.S. they left behind
Ray Sanchez | Direct from Havana
May 18, 2008
HAVANA

Nearly four decades after allegedly killing a New Mexico state trooper
and fleeing to Cuba, Charlie Hill lives on the outskirts of the capital
in a tiny apartment with a backed-up toilet. He gets by on a ration card
and a $10 monthly state stipend.

The 58-year-old grandfather and avowed black separatist listens to South
Florida AM radio stations that reach across the straits for news and
sports scores. Phrases from the turbulent 1960s, like "right on," pepper
his speech.

Hill is among 70 fugitives from American justice who live as ordinary
citizens in Cuba, where the revolutionary government welcomed many as
militants and political activists who faced persecution in the United
States. Cuba's government has refused almost all requests for their
return but, in 2006, said "it would no longer provide safe haven to new
U.S. fugitives entering Cuba," according to the State Department.

Still, time, not the law, is catching up with the U.S. fugitives. One of
the most notorious was Robert Vesco, an American businessman
investigated in the 1970s for stealing more than $200 million from a
Swiss mutual fund company. Rather than face charges, Vesco moved around
Latin America before settling in Cuba in the 1980s.

Burial records at Havana's Colon Cemetery show a 71-year-old man with
the same name and birth date as Vesco died on Nov. 23 from lung cancer
and was buried the next day in a private plot. His demise was not known,
even among other American fugitives, until recent press reports.

Hill is among a handful of holdovers who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s,
an era when revolution and violent activism was romanticized, and
hijacking planes to Cuba was a common escape for radicals seeking
refuge. To them, Vesco was another kind of outlaw.

"Vesco was running from the law because he stole money," Hill said.
"When you are a revolutionary you're in exile and you still continue
your struggle as best you can. I'm an exile."

American fugitives in Cuba include black separatists, Black Panthers and
Puerto Rican independence militants. To American law enforcement, they
are cop killers, bank robbers and common criminals. Some fugitives
speculate their future on the island could end if Cuba tries to work out
a prisoner exchange for the so-called Cuban Five — Cuban nationals
imprisoned for spying in America.

"I don't want that, but hey man, if it happened, I would have to go
down, brother," Hill said.

Wayne Smith, who once served as America's top diplomat in Havana,
dismissed the idea of a prisoner swap.

"I think the Cuban government might be interested, but I don't think it
would really happen," he said. "The U.S. government would be very
reluctant to get into that."

At least one fugitive, Joanne Chesimard, a black nationalist who fled to
Cuba after escaping from a U.S. prison in 1979, has gone into hiding on
the island. She has a $1 million bounty on her head for killing a New
Jersey state trooper in 1973.

Chesimard now goes by the name Assata Shakur. She once listed her number
in the Havana phone book, but now fears that bounty hunters may try to
snatch her, according to a friend who has not seen Shakur in more than a
year.

For its part, Cuba accuses the United States of harboring one of the
island's most-wanted men. Authorities want the United States to hand
over anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative
and alleged mastermind of the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976. All
73 passengers on board were killed. Venezuela, where the downed plane
originated, also has requested his extradition.

Posada Carriles, who was held on immigration charges but freed from a
federal prison in Texas a year ago, also is suspected of plotting a
series of Havana hotel bombings in the late 1990s. Hundreds of
Cuban-Americans honored the exile this month with a sold-out gala in
Miami, where he now lives.

In Cuba, Hill longs for the life he left behind.

"I miss apple pie and sweet potato pie, man," he said. "I miss watching
football. But that doesn't mean I regret being a revolutionary and doing
what I did."

Hill escaped to Cuba in 1971 after a state trooper stopped him and two
other members of a black separatist group outside Albuquerque, N.M. They
were transporting arms and explosives. One of the suspects shot the
trooper, Robert Rosenbloom, in the throat, killing him. The men forced
their way into the Albuquerque airport and hijacked an airliner to Cuba.

Hill's accomplices both died in Cuba: Ralph Goodwin drowned at a beach
outside Havana decades ago; Michael Finney died of throat cancer in 2005.

Asked if he expected to return to America, Hill said: "Maybe in a coffin."

Ray Sánchez can be reached at rlsanchez@sun-sentinel.com.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-flrndcubanotebook0518sbmay18,0,1724996.column