Word: castros
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Looking Beyond Castro...
...waiting to see what TIME would say about Fidel Castro's crackdown on Cuban dissidents [WORLD, May 19]. Tim Padgett's thoughtful and balanced appraisal of Oswaldo Paya, the Cuban dissident who stayed in the country to work for democratic reform, was worth the wait. Paya's drive calling for a plebiscite on free speech and multiparty elections has placed the emphasis on a hopeful future. Castro has run Cuba as his feudal estate for 44 years, but his naive supporters are finally seeing him for the tyrant he is. As Padgett wrote, Paya has succeeded in "wresting the Cuba...
Oswaldo Paya is something Cuban President Fidel Castro has rarely, if ever, faced: a dissident as hardheaded as he is. When Castro took power in 1959, Paya was the only kid in his Havana primary school who refused to become a Communist Youth member. In high school, after openly criticizing the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he was sent to a labor camp for three years. Rather than escape to Miami in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, he stayed in Cuba to work for democratic reform. Now his doggedness has prompted one of Castro's most ironfisted crackdowns: scores of Paya...
...years having openly endorsed Paya's campaign for a popular vote on expanding freedoms, his Christian Liberation Movement (M.C.L.) has produced what most Cuba watchers agree is the first real chance for democratic change on the island. If Bush is too bellicose, he risks provoking further retaliatory measures by Castro, possibly even a crippling of Paya's movement. "The dynamic has changed," says Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami. "We finally have strong democratic players on the ground in Cuba." Garcia's organization once wanted Bush to push for stiffer sanctions against Cuba...
...past, Castro, 76, managed to neutralize dissidents before they became globally known, like Lech Walesa in Poland or Corazon Aquino in the Philippines. But Paya's celebrity is beginning to rival Castro's. During his visit to Cuba last year, ex-President Jimmy Carter hailed Paya in a speech broadcast to every Cuban household. Paya won the European Union's Sakharov Prize for human rights last December. Vaclav Havel, who led the "velvet revolution" that toppled communism in Czechoslovakia, has nominated Paya for the Nobel Peace Prize. Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival last week canceled its screening...