Havana does not negotiate under pressure, politologist says

La Jornada interviews Cuban politologist Rafael Hernández
By Gerardo Arreola, From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada

The case of the dissidents on hunger strikes and the pressures to pardon prisoners affects the progress of the dialogue between Cuba and the United States, as well as the dialogue established with the European Union, politologist Rafael Hernández tells La Jornada.
“The government in Havana does not negotiate under pressure; only diplomatic dialogue brings results, as other governments know well,” he says.
The editor of the Cuban magazine Temas, Hernández has just returned from the University of Texas at Austin, where he delivered a post-graduate lecture on U.S.-Cuba relations that he previously delivered at Columbia, Harvard and, in Mexico, at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) and the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM).
He believes that the dissidents are not civilian society but “opposition microparties,” that among their leaders there is no Havel or Walesa, and that it will be up to the Cubans on the island to decide if Cuban socialism in the future will admit a loyal opposition inside the system.

Q.: What is Cuba's current international situation, especially regarding the United States?
A.: Although this administration has not made substantial political changes toward Cuba, the dialogue has advanced more in the past year than throughout the decade. The talks on migration have resumed and topics such as direct mail have been opened. Congress might approve Americans' freedom to travel to the island. Some semiofficial groups are exploring avenues of cooperation in the interception of drugs. Without lifting the restrictions on academic and cultural exchanges imposed by Bush in 2004, [the Americans] have granted some visas. On the other hand, the European Union, led by Spain, has moved closer to Raúl Castro's government, whose relations with all of Latin America are closer than ever.

Q.: The international view of Cuba concentrates on the opposition, after the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the hunger strike staged by Guillermo Fariñas…
A.: Zapata's death is a human tragedy, but its repercussion responds to political factors linked to Fariñas' hunger strike. None of the current pressures for the pardon of prisoners facilitates changes in Cuban policy, which is besieged today by a propaganda storm. Not even under the pressure of the Missile Crisis [in October 1962], on the brink of a nuclear conflict, did Cuba's policy change. The most effective road to propitiate change – as all Mexican governments have known – is a respectful diplomatic dialogue. It is obvious that Zapata's death and its sequel benefit those who oppose that dialogue with the United States and Europe.

Q.: Are we talking about dissidents, oppositionists, mercenaries, prisoners of conscience, political prisoners?
A.: A dissident is someone who reneges his previous belief. That's not the case of the classic anticommunists in exile but of the former communists who were pro-Soviet, and of other orthodox tendencies that produced Ricardo Bofill, Elizardo Sánchez or Vladimiro Roca, authentic dissidents. They rule out the violence of weapons, same as the main forces of the current anti-Castro exile community.
Both groups differ on the issue of the blockade, but coincide in their desire to restore capitalism and in their bitter anti-Castroism. That is why they easily identify with the United States, with the parties and governments of Europe and other nations.
Although some present themselves as social-democrats, the dissidents' ideological axis shifts between the center and the right. They are small and numerous groups, disperse and without roots in the population. It is clear that, aside from receiving money and political support from Washington, they have ideological beliefs and among them there might be honest, resentful or confused persons. They don't have the social base of a labor union like Solidarnosc, and among their leaders there is no Walesa or Vaclav Havel. They are not a civilian society but opposition microparties.
The handful of political prisoners in their ranks is not behind bars for crimes “of conscience” or for the mere expression of ideas that are contrary to the government but for actively opposing the system, in alliance with the United States, the classic exile community and the old European anticommunism.

Q.: What renders them marginal to the political consensus in Cuba?
A.: First, they're not the only or the main critical voices in the country. Although it doesn't have the same resonance abroad, a political debate is ongoing, inside and outside the institutions, on matters such as decentralization, forms of non-state property, wages, the standard of living, the broadening of spaces for free expression, the application of the law, the democratization of institutions (even political institutions) and the people's control of the bureaucracy.
The oppositionists have no coherent project; only ideological slogans. Their lack of domestic legitimacy is derived from the support given them by the United States (verifiable in the website of the State Department) and the European parties, and their alliance with the exile community.
The embassies in Havana know them and know that they don't represent any viable political alternative. The international reactions and the headlines of the major newspapers respond more to the electoral and parliamentary struggles in those countries than to the situation on the island.

Q.: Any possibility to emerge from that picture?
A.: There is a perverse logic by which Cuba would have to pay a tribute every time the United States made a slight change, for example, by authorizing the travel of Cuban-Americans [to Cuba]. If this administration considers the release of the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States, the only “bargaining chip” acceptable to the United States would be the dissidents imprisoned as “agents of a foreign power,” as they would be called in Cuba.
The dissidents are pawns on this board of opposing powers. Within such a tight picture, it is difficult to expect a change in the treatment toward them. It will be up to the Cubans themselves to decide if, in addition to a renovated democratic institutionalism, a decentralized model and a mixed economy, a loyal opposition will have a place in the future socialist system.