By Yoani Sanchez, Thursday, April 7, 7:29 PM
Thirty years after he left the White House and nine years since his only
previous visit to Cuba, Jimmy Carter arrived in Havana last week,
wearing the white guayabera that would serve as his uniform during a
three-day visit to our island. Watching on television, I recalled how
toward the end of his presidency — just as I was starting kindergarten —
I learned to scream my first anti-imperialist slogans while thinking of
his blue-eyed face.
In the 1970s, the newspaper Granma mocked his background as a peanut
farmer. Soon, however, the Castro regime launched more than grievances
and caricatures at the U.S. president. In 1980, the Mariel Boatlift sent
more than a hundred thousand of our compatriots to his shores, including
prisoners and mental patients rushed to the port from Cuba's jails and
asylums.
Those same sad days brought the birth of "repudiation rallies," with
mobs throwing stones, eggs and excrement and spitting on the "infamous
traitors" boarding those boats because they couldn't stand to wait any
longer for the promised island paradise.
The pressure of such a flood forced Carter to close the doors to
immigrants, handing that battle to Fidel Castro, who screamed "Let the
scum go! Let them go!" as he masked ideological extremism under the pose
of revolutionary euphoria.
Carter's mishandling of that immigration crisis, some say, is among the
reasons he was not reelected.
Some 20 years later, our media did an about-face and began referring to
the former U.S. commander in chief as Mr. Carter. When he visited in
2002 he was introduced as a friend of our Maximum Leader. We who had
once insulted him at school assemblies were confused by the red-carpet
treatment afforded the man who was once our greatest enemy.
On that visit, as on his recent one, Carter met with government figures
but also with opposition groups demonized and outlawed by the
authorities. For a moment, we almost thought the world might have
changed when Carter spoke before national television cameras in the
Great Hall at the University of Havana. It was from his lips that we
Cubans heard for the first time about the Varela Project, an effort by
Oswaldo Paya to collect signatures for a referendum to amend the Cuban
constitution to recognize our basic human rights, including freedom of
expression and association.
But the moment was fleeting. Within a few months of Carter's departure,
a series of arrests known as the Black Spring took place across our
country. Long prison sentences resulted for 75 dissidents and
independent journalists, particularly those who had gathered signatures.
Last week, Carter met with Raul Castro in a formal government setting
and with Fidel Castro, casually and at length in his living room.
As before, the regime pretended to show a tolerant face. Raul apparently
gave the order not to interfere with the Nobel peace laureate's
early-morning breakfast with a few of us alternative bloggers who, just
days earlier, had been demonized on official television as "mercenaries
of the empire."
Also on Carter's agenda were just-released prisoners of the Black
Spring, at least those who were not forced into exile, and their brave
wives — known here as the Ladies in White — who never stopped marching
for their husbands' freedom, stoically facing down the repudiation rallies.
As before, Carter found points on which to praise the government, but it
all sounded more like diplomatic formalities than real points of consensus.
The big question is whether the presence of the former U.S. president in
our complex national situation will change anything. While I don't
believe we will move from a totalitarian state to a democracy by the
mere fact of his visit, some acts have a symbolic significance that
transcends their purposes.
His willingness to meet with bloggers and other representatives of our
country's emerging civil society extends some ephemeral mantle of
protection. It proves that a bubble of respect is possible and that the
shock troops who act against the activities of the dissidents are
neither spontaneous nor autonomous but a formal arm of the regime.
Carter's willingness to hear our concerns forced Cuban authorities to
inadvertently validate us and to acknowledge that there are other voices.
But there must be no illusions. Never mind that Carter proclaimed the
innocence of jailed American Alan Gross, who was sentenced to 15 years
for sharing technology to provide Internet access to Jewish groups in
Cuba, nor that he stated that Cubans should be able to freely leave and
enter the country. Carter will not succeed in creating changes we
ourselves have not set in motion. And on this island where objectivity
finds no middle ground, it seems we must wait for an entire family to
die before anything can happen.
Yoani Sanchez is a writer in Cuba. Her awards include the 2010 World
Press Freedom Hero award. She blogs at www.desdecuba.com/ generationy
and is the author of "Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth
About Cuba Today." This column was translated from Spanish by M.J. Porter.
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