By WILL WEISSERT (AP)
HAVANA — Local leaders of Cuba's Communist Party want to expel a
prominent academic for an article decrying widespread corruption, but
lower-ranking members have rejected the order pending an appeal,
according to an associate of the writer.
Esteban Morales, a historian who has long written on race and relations
with the United States, was ordered removed by a party committee in
Havana's Playa district, said Pedro Campos, a former Cuban diplomat who
once worked as a researcher under Morales at the University of Havana's
Center for the Study of the United States.
But grass-roots party members in Playa said they considered the
committee's action too harsh and rejected it, and Morales said he would
appeal the sanctions, according to Campos.
Neither the party nor Morales have commented on the case, and it was
unclear if Morales has been formally removed from the party yet.
It was also not clear if the municipal committee was responding to
complaints from higher levels or acting on its own. Municipal committees
report to provincial committees, which are overseen by the powerful
Central Committee that meets only behind closed-doors.
Campos first posted word of action against Morales in an essay on
kaosenlared.net, a left-leaning political website. In a subsequent phone
interview with The Associated Press, Campos confirmed the facts
published online, but refused further comment.
He also described the effort to dismiss Morales from the Communist Party
on the English-language Havana Times website. He said he had known
Morales since 1991 and described him as a committed communist.
At issue is an article Morales wrote in April that described corruption
at the highest echelons of Cuba's government — not the meddling of a few
opposition activists — as the greatest threat to the country's communist
system.
Nearly as unusual as his public complaint was the fact that his essay
was posted on the state-run website of the National Artists and Writers
Union of Cuba. The article was removed a day after foreign media in
Havana reported on it.
Morales' essay crossed a number of red lines in tightly controlled Cuba,
including openly discussing corruption rumors surrounding the recent
dismissal of a top aviation official who had fought alongside Ernesto
"Che" Guevara and Fidel and Raul Castro in the 1950s.
"There must be some truth to these reports, because this is a small
country where everyone knows each other," Morales wrote.
He also said some Cuban officials are preparing to divide the spoils if
Cuba's political system disintegrates, like the shadowy oligarchs who
emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
"In reality, corruption is much more dangerous than so-called internal
dissent," he wrote. "The latter is isolated ... but corruption is truly
counterrevolutionary because it comes from within the government and the
state apparatus."
Morales didn't criticize the Castro brothers, but said cronyism is rampant.
"It has become evident that there are people in government and state
positions who are preparing a financial assault for when the revolution
falls," he wrote. "Others likely have everything ready to produce the
transfer of state property into private hands, like what happened in the
former Soviet Union."
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