The Force of Intimidation

MARCH 26, 2011


By Czech journalist Eduard Freisler in The Miami Herald:


Haunting Scene in Cuba


We've all watched the TV images as dictators and autocrats in the Middle East and North Africa sent their thugs to the streets to attack pro-democratic protestors. These images have brought back to my memory a scene I witnessed almost five years ago in Cuba. It still haunts me.

They gathered in front of Yamila Llanes Labrada's house around noon. A vitriolic crowd dominated by the town's elders. It was Saturday in the small town of Las Tunas in 2006, and it was very hot, with humidity on the rise. The oppressive weather made the situation even tenser. I had an unclear vision of what was coming.

Yamila and her four kids were, at that time, waiting for her husband, José Luis García Paneque, to come home from prison where he was serving 24 years for dissent. Never giving up, she often looked out the window hoping for his return. José Luis was arrested on March 18, 2003 as part of Fidel Castro's crackdown on 75 members of the Cuban opposition.

I had talked with Yamila in her home the day before Castro's people came. Yamila, a member of the anti-government movement Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco), told me about the mob actions. When I gave her a puzzled look, she said: "A small crowd of people come to my door to verbally harass me. They call me many names. Bitch, worm, garbage, just to name a few. Come and see it with your own eyes."

This was all too familiar to me. I came of age under communism in the former Czechoslovakia where the party leaders and their backers used to treat people who opposed the regime with hatred and disgust.

However, the mob scenes in Cuba were a new thing for me. I accepted Yamila's suggestion to see it for myself. To be sure I could really witness everything, I found a hiding place in the bushes close enough to see the crowd, hoping not to be spotted. If Castro's thugs were to see me inside the house, they would have "proof" that Yamila was "palling around with Western spies." So to protect her and her children, I hid as I watched.

Everything started on a calm note, as if the people coming to Yamila's house were getting together for a picnic. Two men were chatting while smoking cigarettes; an older woman was slowly waving a fan in front of her face. Then, a group of five came to join them. After a while, another six people showed up. Most of the people were well into their 70s. The oldest Cuban generation is the most loyal to Castro because his revolution is their whole life, and they are prepared to defend it.

I counted some 25 villagers gathered outside Yamila's home. They started to shout nasty slurs almost as one. They called Yamila a slut, a terrorist, dirt. After a while, hysteria took hold. People were urging Yamila to leave the country and threatening her with prison. Some were stomping the ground forcefully. Pretty quickly, the scene got a bit hazy because the stomping mob stirred up the dusty road. Even in the haze, the mood became more intimidating. "This street belongs to Fidel," a female voice suddenly cut the air sharply with this verbal assault. It was a high-pitched shriek that gave me a chill. I decided to retreat for my own security.

A few days later, I went to see Oswaldo Payá Sardinas, one of the leading figures of the Cuban opposition. With the scene outside Yamila's home still fresh in my mind, I had to ask him about it. "Castro borrowed these acts from Nazis pogroms against Jews and Mao's cultural revolution," Payá told me in his Havana home. "Castro's thugs harass and beat people because they have been promised a new telephone or have been paid couple of pesos. Some of his adherents throw rotten eggs, vegetables or even animal excrement at the houses of the anti-regime people," he added.

Castro's daughter, Alina Fernández Revuelta, who lives in exile in Miami, is also familiar with these brutal practices. "This is, by all means, one of the ugliest faces of the Castro regime," she told me when I spoke to her in 2006. Fernández also revealed that Castro's thugs had assaulted her a couple of times, even in Miami. "The scenario is always the same. They want you to get scared; they want you to break down."

Fortunately, the Castro regime did not break Yamila's spirit. She and her children got out of Cuba and settled in Texas in 2007. Only now am I writing about what I saw in 2006 because I feared that press exposure could bring them harm. But even though Yamila left, her husband remained imprisoned in Cuba. It was only last summer that he was freed by the Castro regime and sent to Spain.

There he told the press what his family had gone through and he described an incident involving even more ferocious psychological warfare than what I saw. Another time, around 50 of Castro's supporters, this time carrying clubs, started to hurl stones at Yamila's house and threatened to burn it down. Some shouted that they'd kill Yamila and her kids or in their words: "To burn the worms inside to death."

To this day, Damas de Blanco and other Cubans face this torment. Recently, the Cuban government might have started some significant economic reforms, but politically it is still a ruthless regime, ready to unleash its own thugs against pro-democracy people. This force of intimidation still works on most of the Cuban population except groups like Damas de Blanco. They march on...