The Other Side of Cuba's Prisoner Release

The announcement by Havana that it would release five political prisoners “who would travel to Spain with their families,” and another 47 during the next three or four months, has been credited to efforts by Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos and Cuba’s archbishop, Cardinal Jaime Ortega.

But neither Cardinal Ortega, nor Minister Moratinos would have had any possibility of “negotiating” the prisoners’ release, if it were not for the willingness of the Cuban opposition to continue its struggle despite harassment, beatings, imprisonment, and even death. And it remains to be seen what happens when prisoners to be released insist on staying on the island.

Foremost among the real heroes who pressured the regime to release prisoners was a 42-year-old Afro-Cuban bricklayer, Orlando Zapata Tamayo. As a political prisoner, Zapata shook the world with a hunger strike which, after the regime denied him water for several days, ended in his death. Free Cubans outside the island called on the world to denounce the crime in Havana. In turn, governments, human rights organizations and international leaders asked the Castros’ government to release political prisoners and prestigious foreign media reported on the situation. The coverage got to Raúl Castro, who blamed it, and the humanitarian appeals, on the CIA, saying that the international attention was a “media war against the revolution.”

Havana needed to do something. Its decision: release the remaining prisoners of the 75 that went to jail in 2003.

Read the full text of this web exclusive at www.AmericasQuarterly.org.

Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, which is based in Arlington, Va.