'I Can't Just Do Nothing': A heroine out of Cuba

National Review, March 11, 2002 by Jay Nordlinger

If she were any but an anti-Communist heroine, she might well be famous: the subject of documentaries, movies, songs. Her image might be on posters and T-shirts. The Nobel Committee would possibly murmur her name.

Actually, to call her an anti-Communist heroine is not quite right, because she is a pro-democracy, pro-freedom, pro-human rights heroine: and the tyranny she is fighting just happens to be Red. But her fame is confined to Cubans, Cuban-Americans, and the relative few who are interested in them.

Maritza Lugo Fernandez left Cuba for American shores on January 11. Her reception at the airport in Miami was tumultuous. For many years, she has been one of the most stirring of Cuba's political prisoners and democratic oppositionists. Not yet 40 years old, she has been jailed more than 30 times. Her husband, Rafael Ibarra Roque, is president of one of the country's main opposition groups; he is in the eighth year of a 20-year sentence in one of Castro's prisons.

I interviewed Lugo at the home of supporters in New Jersey. Her face is serious, troubled, and absorbed; she looks as though she had a great weight on her shoulders. She did not want exile. She felt she had no choice, however, as her younger daughter, age eleven, had been increasingly miserable. The constant harassment by the regime and the ever-present danger had taken their toll. Sometimes both parents were in prison, which posed a particular hardship. Many Cubans dream of leaving for the United States -- and die trying -- but it was an excruciating sacrifice for Lugo to leave her husband, her cause, and her country. She did so for the girl. It seems certain, though, that Cuba has not seen the last of her.

The regime was only too happy to see Lugo go -- they had been "encouraging" her to leave for many years. Her activities had gotten under their skin, of course. An effective, heroic, fearless oppositionist like Lugo "contaminates" others, which is to say, inspires them, and emboldens them. Lugo had also attracted a little international attention -- so the regime felt it was better off without her.

Conditions in the prisons are wretched, as Lugo confirms: isolation, beatings, rats, druggings, spoiled food, strip searches, filth, disease, the withholding of medical care. The regime likes to boast that it does not execute people, and European diplomats are impressed. But there are many, many suicides -- and if the suicide should happen to fail, further punishment is severe. A suicide attempt is a serious breach of discipline. Many go crazy, their minds taken from them as well as their physical freedom.

Maritza Lugo has noticed that the world has reacted with alarm to the treatment of terrorist prisoners by Americans at Guantanamo Bay. What does she think of this? A trace of a smile crosses her otherwise sad face: "We [Cubans] would love to be treated that way."

The group to which Lugo and her husband belong, and which they help lead, is the Frank Pais November 30 Democratic Party (a mouthful). Who was Frank Pais? A democratic fighter against the Batista dictatorship (which preceded the Castro dictatorship). He was gunned down by fascist forces in 1957 (two years before Castro's seizure of power). Why November 30? That was the date -- in 1956 -- of Pais's celebrated uprising in Santiago de Cuba.

Lugo's activities have consisted mainly in spreading the word about Cuba's political prisoners and trying to support the families of those prisoners. She has organized public demonstrations, in churches and on the streets. All of their activities are peaceful -- but the actions directed against them by the might of the state are anything but.

A hopeful event in the life of Cuba came in 1998, when Pope John Paul II visited the island. Maritza Lugo was under house arrest at the time, but she joined the throng to hand out photos of political prisoners, and fliers about them, to the international press. She says, "For the little time the Pope was there, we felt free. We yelled things like, 'Freedom for Political Prisoners!' and 'Freedom for Cuba!' The state security surrounded us, as usual, but did not touch us." This accommodation lasted only as long as the Pope's visit did.

The journalists took the activists' photos and fliers, but they did so, says Lugo, "with a lot of fear. They said, 'Thank you, thank you,' and hurried away. They wouldn't ask questions. They seemed scared of receiving the information." Lugo relates this with another hint of a smile, as though having a hard time believing that foreign journalists -- who were free, and untouchable by the regime -- could be more scared than the oppositionists, who were risking everything. One gets the impression that, polite though she is, Lugo is amazed at the lack of courage of people who are lucky enough to be free.

From prison, in March of last year, Lugo wrote a "J'accuse," denouncing the abuses of the Castro system and appealing to the world community. She dared anyone with a conscience to discover the "raw truth" about Cuba. She tore into Castro's propaganda -- about medicine, about literacy, about the races -- and said that, with the success of that propaganda, the dictator was "laughing at the whole world." She decried a regime that turns people "into phonies and hypocrites merely to survive."