Feckless and fragmented

Old-guard dissidents get a failing grade in USINT critique

By Emilio Paz

In a cable of almost brutal frankness, the chief of the United States Interests Section in Havana, Jonathan Farrar, last year ripped apart the traditional dissident movement in Cuba, saying that it lacks “resonance among ordinary Cubans” and that its members “are old and out of touch.”

“They are not widely known in Cuba outside the foreign diplomatic and press corps,” and few, if any, “have a political vision that could be applied to future governance,” Farrar’s critique says.

They waste their energy “trying to undercut one another,” the diplomat wrote to his State Department superiors on April 15, 2009. While their first concern is to collect money from various sources – mostly the United States and often the USINT itself – their “next most important pursuit seems to be to limit or marginalize the activities of erstwhile allies, thus preserving power and access to scarce resources.”

Farrar uses words like “feuds,” “jealousy,” “internal divisions” and “power struggles” to describe the defects of the disjointed dissident groups.

In contrast, “younger individuals, including bloggers, musicians, and performing and plastic artists do not belong to identifiable organizations, though they are much better at taking ‘rebellious’ stands with greater popular appeal.”

However, the young folks “eschew the label of ‘dissidents,’ and do not seem to aspire to any leadership role,” the cable says. To make things worse, from Farrar’s point of view, “the international fame gained by a few, such has blogger Yoani Sánchez, fuels further jealousy among the traditional dissident organizations and prevents them from working with the incipient networks that the younger generations are beginning to form.”

The traditional dissident movement has no widespread support on the island, is not “a political alternative to the government of Cuba” and “is not likely to supplant [it],” Farrar writes, adding that “it is unlikely that [it] will play any significant role in whatever government succeeds the Castro brothers.”

Farrar concedes that “the most likely immediate successors to the Castro regime will probably come from within the middle ranks of the government itself.” But, in a tacit admission that the USINT has limited or no access to government sources, adds that “we do not know yet who might eventually rise to leadership positions in place of the old guard from within the government.”

“We will need to look elsewhere, including within the government itself, to spot the most likely successors to the Castro regime,” the message says.

The cable was made public by WikiLeaks, through the Spanish newspaper El País. Some of the more significant excerpts follow:

“As the Raúl Castro government of Cuba appears to have settled into a position of undisputed authority internally, it is worth asking what the Cuban political opposition is doing and the role it may play in the future. Two recent op-ed pieces in the [Miami] press that have infuriated dissident leaders argue that the answers are: not much and none.

“Though the op-ed pieces do not mention it, this assessment should carry the caveat that part of the reason for the relative inaction of the opposition is that the [government] is taking active steps to undermine it. Many opposition groups are prone to dominance by individuals with strong egos who do not work well together and are therefore easy targets for manipulation by the Cuban security services. […]

“[The op-ed pieces] argued that the dissident movement in Cuba has become as old and as out of touch with the lives of ordinary Cubans as the regime itself.

“The articles represented comprehensive and fairly balanced critiques of the dissident movement, and appeared at a time when the dissidents are under more pressure than ever from the Cuban government. As such, they might have generated a reform debate among the dissident leaders, but instead they simply focused dissident frustration with the Cuban exile community.

“We see very little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among ordinary Cubans. Informal polls we have carried out among visa and refugee applicants have shown virtually no awareness of dissident personalities or agendas. Judging from the reactions we have heard from our dissident contacts, the most painful accusation made by the commentators was that the dissidents are old and out of touch. […]

“They have little contact with younger Cubans and, to the extent they have a message that is getting out, it does not appeal to that segment of society. […] Despite claims that they represent ‘thousands of Cubans,’ we see little evidence of such support.

“When we question opposition leaders about their programs, we do not see platforms designed to appeal to a broad cross section of Cuban society. Rather, the greatest effort is directed at obtaining enough resources to keep the principal organizers and their key supporters living from day to day.

“One political party organization told [Farrar] quite openly and frankly that it needed resources to pay salaries and presented him with a budget in the hope that USINT would be able to cover it. […]

“[Farrar] met on March 31 with the leaders of several self-professed political parties, most of them in some way claiming to be a successor to the old Cuban Liberal Party. […] When [Farrar] asked representatives of each group to explain how they would appeal to the Cuban public at large if there were open national elections tomorrow, none had a good answer, and it was apparent that they had not given a great deal of thought to that possibility. […]

“A consistent problem, and one that is becoming more acute as the eventual end of the Castro brothers’ regime comes into sight, is the relationship between the on-island opposition and the exile community. Even though much of their resources continues to come from exile groups, opposition members of all stripes complain that the intention of the exiles is to undercut local opposition groups so that they can move into power when the Castros leave.

“The islanders accuse Miami and Madrid-based exiles of trying to orchestrate their activities from afar, and of misrepresenting their views to policy makers in Washington. […]

“From our standpoint, […] there are few if any dissidents who have a political vision that could be applied to future governance. Though the dissidents will not acknowledge it, they are not widely known in Cuba outside the foreign diplomatic and press corps. […]

“Still, we believe we must try to expand our contacts within Cuban society on leadership and democracy initiatives as broadly as possible.”

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(The Oxford dictionary defines mercenary as “primarily concerned with money or other reward; a hired soldier; grasping, greedy, covetous, moneygrubbing.”)

Emilio Paz, an observer of U.S.-Cuba relations, lives in Miami.