Granma's editor wants more blood

Carlos Alberto Montaner

Mr. Lázaro Barredo, editor-in-chief of Granma and a member of the Cuban Parliament, has just asked for harsher punishment for the democrats in the opposition. I suppose that he wants them beaten with greater viciousness and sentenced to longer prison terms, and wants the Ladies in White, for example, to be vilified more cruelly for being at the service of Yankee imperialism. I imagine Barredo was greatly pleased when his minions kicked the mother of the Sigler brothers almost to death. She's a tiny old lady who weighs all of 80 pounds and unceasingly asks for the release of her imprisoned sons, reason enough for those goons to break several of her ribs.

Barredo, whom friends and enemies alike have mockingly dubbed “Berrido” (Spanish for “bleat”), according to his comrade Martin Medem, a former correspondent of Spanish Radio-Television in Cuba and someone well linked to the communists, is a member of the State Security. Other former comrades say that he is an old torpedo from Department Three of the Counterintelligence Department, assigned to the harassment of intellectuals, and describe him as an organizer of mobs and acts of repudiation who enjoyed pummeling and spitting on people who wanted to leave the country during the Mariel exodus. I don't know what went through his mind when his son Josué, a good poet who was totally innocent of his father's behavior, decided to seek exile.

Barredo may have a surfeit of skill to mistreat his equals but he lacks a rigorousness of logic. On one hand, he fiercely proclaims the right of the dictatorship to intensely practice “revolutionary internationalism” anywhere in the world and in any of its modalities (money, propaganda, weapons, training, guerrillas, terrorism), while on the other he maintains that dissidents and oppositionists be exterminated because they receive some timid manifestations of “democratic internationalism” consisting of political solidarity, small donations, computers, cameras, medicines and other elements that enable them to resist the broadsides of the repressive apparatus while furnishing sustenance to their imprisoned relatives.

Not satisfied with asking for more abuse for the Cuban democrats, Barredo wants me extradited to Cuba. I don't like to use this space to air personal laundry but, because the affair has become public, I think I must broach it. Granma's editor has asked for my extradition because I am allegedly a fugitive from justice, something that is only halfway true. Almost half a century ago, in March 1961, when I was 17, I escaped from jail with another teenage student who was also a political prisoner. At the time, we were trying -- like tens of thousands of other students and peasants -- to keep the communist dictatorship from consolidating. Why did Barredo utter a half-truth? Because I was fleeing not from justice but from the injustice of an absolutely illegal trial that lasted half an hour and was packed with fake evidence and false witnesses, as one of the members of the tribunal confessed to me later, in a valuable deposition that I still keep. Years later, he fled to Spain.

 Why this extemporaneous, clownish stunt by the Cuban government? If they seriously tried to extradite me to Cuba, there would be such a monumental uproar in the media that the dictatorship would find egg all over its face. And if they succeeded and took me to Cuba, they would have an uneasy choice: either they put me before a firing squad or they throw me in prison. If they shoot me, world condemnation of such an unjustified crime would be huge, because I am totally innocent. If they imprison me, they would turn me into a victime célèbre, for whom the dictatorship would pay a political price every day. In other words, the dictatorship knows that the price of letting Barredo get away with this circus show is a lot higher than the value of imprisoning me, particularly when it cannot charge me with anything other than escaping from an unjust sentence when I was barely an adolescent.

If the political police is aware of this, why has it staged such a ridiculous show? For two reasons, I expect. First, to try to discredit or scare me, something it has never been able to do, despite its decades-long dirty campaign of slander and innuendos. Second, to try to destroy Yoani Sánchez, the woman in Havana who -- very bravely -- writes the blog Generation Y. Though I greatly admire that person, I don't know her, either directly or indirectly; yet, they try to link her with me.

I must point out that this is not the first time that Cuba's repressive apparatus has attempted to silence my voice. In the fall of 1987, the Cuban intelligence service, a busy cultivator of terrorism, sent to my Madrid office a bomb inside a book. I myself opened the package. The book was titled A Very Sweet Death and the detonator was not connected. They didn't want to kill me. It was another clownish act, intended to frighten me with an implied message: “Keep your mouth shut. We can kill you whenever we want.” The Spanish intelligence service, which investigated the incident with great seriousness, even told me the name of the Cuban diplomat who had organized the operation -- a gentleman named Eduardo Araoz. I suppose he belonged to the same department where the Granma editor today performs his dirty deeds

Mayo 30, 2008

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