Horrible End or Horror That Doesn’t End?

Cruz: On the wall I am facing, there is, quite coincidentally and aptly, a quotation from Jose Marti that reads: “Liberty is very dear, and we must either resign ourselves to living without it, or pay the price of liberty.” Those words express my sentiments exactly. That is what we are trying to do in Alternative Criterion: “Pay the price of liberty.” Democracy is an exercise which we must begin to learn. After 32 years of living under the same dictator in a totalitarian regime where only one voice and one viewpoint is expressed, it is high time that we learn to be democrats, and Alternative Criterion is a good exercise in internal democracy. . . .

The government’s system of repression has changed. It has not disappeared but varied its methods. For example, the government is looking at ways for intellectuals to defect the county. Out of the blue, it will offer you a scholarship to study abroad, all expenses paid; you can even go to Australia and study the kangaroo’s pouch, if you like. They want the least possible number of dissidents or potential opponents of Fidel Castro in the country when the crisis becomes even worse. . . .

We are almost at the beginning of the end. . . . What is coming now is simply the reality of a totally inefficient country run by an absolutely inept man. . . .

Yes, there are pressures. Messages on the telephone, threats of dismissal from work. They corral you until you finally say, “If not for me, then for my children, I must leave this country--their lives and mine are at stake.” And once you announce your intention to leave, the government brands you a traitor. But I don’t think it is a crime to have an instinct of self-preservation. And I wouldn’t put much faith in the relaxation of repression in Cuba. . . .

There’s a theory circulating on the streets. I have heard my neighbors repeat it: “We must choose between a horrible end, or a never ending horror.”

Velazquez: I call upon all left-wing intellectuals in Latin America, who have always regarded the Cuban government as some kind of paradigm, to realize that what we have here is the last phase of an openly fascist regime, which has absolutely no hope for survival. They should know that many of their friends in the Cuban intelligentsia may perish in the death throes of the regime. It is possible that what we are doing now, speaking into this tape recorder, we may not be able to do again, at least not in the immediate future. . . .

And if I could add something else: Please put an SOS out for Cuba. You who are sensible men, do not permit this island to sink into the ocean, or this mad Pied Piper to lead us all to the water’s edge.