Looking for work/study in Cuba?

Friends of Cuban Libaries has the story (scroll down):

NEW YORK, May 6, 2005 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - Sensitive to growing international concern over reports of human rights violations, in late April the government of President Fidel Castro conducted a secret trial of two Cuban librarians, Elio Enrique Chávez and Luis Elio de la Paz, and sentenced them to prison on a charge of "dangerousness."

I hope our government never grows so sensitive.

The two librarians from eastern Cuba are registered delegates to the Assembly to Promote a Civil Society, a conference of more than 300 non-governmental organizations scheduled to convene in Havana on May 20....The hundreds of organizations planning to meet in Havana for the Civil Assembly are regarded as illegal by the Cuban regime, which refuses to recognize the existence of civic groups outside of its control.

I guess if the government regards them as illegal, then they are illegal.

In a letter smuggled out of jail, Elio Enrique Chávez and Luis Elio de la Paz provided details to the Executive Committee of the Civil Assembly about their recent trial:

"Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Gómez Vásquez Allen ordered us to be taken out of our cell for an interview," states the letter from the two librarians, "telling us that the trial was on a charge of Dangerousness ("peligrosidad"), that we were going to be convicted and we could say whatever we wanted, but the jury wasn't going to pay attention to anything we said."

...the police told the defendants that their prison terms would be publicized as a government work/study program rather than a form of punishment...

That Fidel: He's such a humorist.

The following story quotes Che Guevara's grandson:

Canek Sánchez Guevara, a grandson of Che Guevara who has left Cuba and now lives in Mexico. In yet another sign of the emergence of a civil society within Cuba, Canek Sánchez Guevara has decisively broken with the Castro regime and has adopted anarchist/libertarian views.

In this article he is responding to comments by Celia Hart, the daughter of two other high-ranking officials in the Cuban government. Celia Hart had emphasized the need for President Castro to embrace a broader range of supporters on the left, including Trotskyists and anarchists, as long as they profess loyalty to the Communist Party; both groups were persecuted when President Castro seized power in 1959.

"Do you know, or do you not know, that these revolutionaries [in present-day Cuba] don't have a right to open a library to the public, to broadcast a radio program, to hold meetings without permission, to have their own newspaper or to freely defend their viewpoints within trade unions or within groups focused on young people, neighborhood activism, gender, environmentalism, etc.? These things require a degree of freedom which today is nonexistent and which calls for, not the intervention of the State, but rather autonomous authority; they require nothing more or less than the socially guaranteed possibility of every collective group, however they may define themselves - as long as they don't violate the liberty of others - to set their own rules. You...must have noticed the obsession [in Castro's Cuba] with surveillance, control, repression, etc. And freedom is something entirely different."

If Canek Sanchez Guevara is a sign that civil society is emerging in Cuba, why is he living in Mexico? A "broader range of supporters" means Trotskyites and anarchists? I suspect he means leftist anarchists rather than individualist anarchists, but maybe. Does anybody out there know?

Thanks to ArtsJournal for the lead.