Who Cares About Cuba?: Ninety miles away, far from our minds

National Review, June 11, 2001 by Jay Nordlinger

It is a bald question, and one that pops up from time to time: Why are Americans so indifferent to the plight of Cubans? Why do Americans, particularly our elites, scorn the exile community in Florida? Why do our elites continually excuse, or defend, or outright champion the Communist regime in Cuba? Why do the media ignore the heroics of Cuban dissidents, which should be the stuff of page-one stories, and magazine covers, and Movies of the Week? Why?

This is a question that Cubans and Cuban-Americans ask all the time, in anguished and bewildered tones. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former U.N. ambassador, says that all this is "both a puzzling and a profoundly painful phenomenon of our times." What is "especially puzzling," she continues, "is the extreme selectivity of concern over terrible, terrible suffering, the deprivation of all rights." Americans followed the saga of South Africa with intense interest, and activism. The abuses of the Pinochet regime in Chile are the subject of film, song, and much else. The victims of right-wing dictatorship can usually count on the world's attention. But those who dare to resist and challenge the regime in Cuba work in near-total darkness.

Let us take a couple of cases out of the darkness. Here are two that have crossed my desk in recent days.

The first involves a man named Rene Montes de Oca Martija. He is a dissident, a human-rights campaigner, and a Christian. Thirty-seven years old, he has been jailed or detained repeatedly. Montes de Oca was born into a family of oppositionists; his uncle, for example, was a well-known political prisoner. For this reason, Montes de Oca himself was singled out at school, denied what privileges there were and marked as an enemy. His mother was a Jehovah's Witness, which meant additional persecution. Montes de Oca himself is a Pentecostalist, and an official with the Human Rights Party (illegal, of course), which is affiliated with the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, watched over by the late physicist's widow, Yelena Bonner.

Montes de Oca was arrested and imprisoned in July of last year. He was charged with "threatening the security of the state." His actual offense was to have called for the release of political prisoners, free elections, a fair penal code, and the possibility of Christian education in the schools. On April 20, he escaped. There is a kind of Underground Railroad in Cuba, a network of people who help oppositionists. Montes de Oca could not very well avail himself of this system, however, as he was a fugitive, and the penalties for aiding a fugitive are severe. But he managed to contact Cuban-Americans in Florida who do what they can to help oppositionists, mainly by simply taking their statements and trying to disseminate them somehow. These helpers then turned to me. They knew that I had written about Cuba, they knew that National Review was anti-Communist ("pro-Cuban" would be another way to put that), and they thought we would be interested. Would I be willing to interview Montes de Oca, if it could be arranged? I spoke to him by phone on May 5.

The dissident related his story in an agitated but resolute voice. He expected to be arrested again soon; he was desperate for his story to be heard. He knew that, once he was recaptured, he would face not only heavy punishment for having escaped, but trumped-up charges of "common" crimes, such as thievery. The mother of his child had already lost her job because the authorities demanded that she testify that Montes de Oca had beaten her. She refused, and suffered the consequences.

Primarily, Montes de Oca was worried about his son, twelve years old. The boy had been badly beaten a number of times at school, by older boys who are sons of "patriotic" military personnel. This occurred with the apparent blessing of the authorities. Police were dogging the son to and from school. Montes de Oca's highest hope was that the boy would be allowed to leave the country to receive medical care: He suffers from a hernia affecting his testicles, and also from a twisted spine. Both conditions require surgery. The boy is being denied treatment, however, because he is the son of an oppositionist.

Montes de Oca has endured persecution that can hardly be imagined. "Why do you persist?" I asked him. "Why do you take these risks? How can you be so brave?" He answered, "There are many brave people in Cuba, both men and women. We have always been faithful: a faithful community, a faithful people. We take our strength from the Bible. We believe in love, justice, and peace. We take God's truth to the darkest and loneliest places of human existence, like the prisons." And what did he want from Americans, I asked, beyond specific help for his son? "I would like them to remember their principles: their sense of unity, justice, and liberty, maintained over so many years." Last, he wished to say, "Human rights cannot exist without God."

Three days later, on May 8, he was indeed rearrested. In the afternoon, he spoke with supporters in the United States, wanting to provide as much information as possible, and then he went to the home of a fellow oppositionist. In the night, state security broke in and hauled both men off. No one has heard from Montes de Oca again; his family, at this writing, has been denied any information about him, and they fear the worst.