opinion

Orlando Zapata and the Castro brothers
by Eric Jackson

There is plenty of hypocrisy to go around among the bourgeoisie, which is regularly expressed in their corporate mainstream media. But Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata was not a member of the bourgeoisie. He didn't enrich himself by exploiting the labor of others. He was a bricklayer.

The government of Spain, headed by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a member of the Socialist Party, opposed last year's overthrow of the elected Honduran president. He has long opposed US efforts to isolate Cuba and choke off its economy. But when Orlando Zapata died after a nearly three-month hunger strike, the Spanish leader said: "We can only imagine the suffering of Cuban political prisoners and from here we must demand that the Cuban regime set free its prisoners of conscience and respect human rights. This is a demand on the part of the whole international community."

This reporter opposed the Honduran coup, the April 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela, and the promotion of a secessionist movement to tear Bolivia apart in the wake of Evo Morales's election there. This reporter stood nearly alone among the Panamanian media and was the object of a number of malicious and untrue screeds for upholding the Venezuelan government's right not to renew the license of a television station whose management had been active participants in the coup attempt. This reporter has long opposed and still opposes the US economic embargo against Cuba, and the harboring of terrorists who attack innocent Cubans (and Panamanians) by the United States. It is the editorial stance of The Panama News that the five Cuban spies who are serving long US prison terms for infiltrating Miami exile organizations ought to be sent home. This publication supports organized labor and defends the property rights of impoverished rural communities against the predations of wealthy corporations. Mr. Diez's caricature might fit somebody, but it doesn't fit me.

However, there is a concept that totalitarians of all political stripes invariably reject, and (small "d") democrats across the political spectrum always uphold: people have a right to believe in whatever they want --- no matter how stupid or misguided --- and they have a right to express their beliefs. It's wrong to persecute someone for his or her religion. It's wrong to waterboard somebody for his or her real or supposed political affiliations. It's wrong to throw a person in prison for the political opinions she or he expresses.

Orlando Zapata was originally sent to prison to serve a three-year term, pursuant to Article 144 of Cuba's Penal Code, for disrespecting Fidel Castro. Once he was in prison five more such convictions were handed down, with consecutive three-year prison terms. Zapata didn't assault anybody, he didn't plot to kill anybody, he didn't hire himself out to any foreign power that was attacking Cuba. He was a humble construction worker who criticized the leader of his country, which everybody everywhere ought to have a right to do. That was his "crime," and for that reason Amnesty International rightly designated him as a prisoner of conscience.

Like Gandhi's hunger strikes shook the British Empire, like the sacrifice of Bobby Sands and several of his fellow IRA prisoners sank Maggie Thatcher's hopes for a military solution in Northern Ireland, like Nelson Mandela's perseverance behind bars wore down South Africa's apartheid regime, Orlando Zapata's protest has staggered the government in Havana. The Castro brothers have been busily arranging things so that they will continue dictating Cuba's direction from their graves, but it's increasingly clear that this will not be possible.

Can the Cuban government and its acolytes continue to talk about bourgeois hypocrisy, and about those people in Miami who would replace the left-wing dictatorship with a right-wing one? Sure. They can and they will. But if they have any remnant of socialist ethics in their thinking, if "An injury to one is an injury to all" still registers in their minds, they will see to it that an oligarchic dictatorship is avoided by the creation of a working class democracy, one in which bricklayers like Orlando Zapata are free to speak their minds and to run for office in fair and open elections. They will free the two dozen or so Cuban journalists being held as political prisoners, cease and desist from their endless information control games and allow the men and women of the Cuban working class to fully inform themselves and draw their own conclusions.