Smiling, incisive look and clear positions. Manuel Cuesta Morúa, 59, pops up punctually at a cafe in Havana to be interviewed. Unafraid to show his face in a country frightened by its own shadow, he talks naturally about his latest arrests. One of them in the protests of last July 11, and another, on November 15, when an attempt to repeat the demonstrations failed.
“What concerns us most today are human rights abuses through disproportionate sentences and reports of torture and disappearances,” he says. In recent months, the regime has sentenced hundreds of activists to prison terms of up to 25 years, including dozens of minors.
“I’m focused on that, on getting these people an amnesty. There’s a lot to be done in Cuba. It may seem at a slow pace for someone abroad, but things are moving,” he says.
Are the material conditions that led to the July 11th acts better or worse in Cuba today? The shortage of food and medicine remains very bad, and with inflation [77,3% segundo dados oficiais do regime, que não contabilizam as movimentações do mercado negro], the situation of the poorest, whether in the provinces or on the outskirts of Havana, is terrible. Conditions are much worse.
The pillars of the Cuban economy are very corroded: tourism, which has recently started to recover after the crisis generated by the pandemic, but in an incipient way, medicine, which has already lagged behind its historical vanguard, and remittances from abroad, which decreased due to Covid.
So the conditions for a new social explosion exist. What prevents you? The high and disproportionate condemnations of 11 J protesters left everyone scared, in addition to the repression of those days. The official figures are not reliable, but we know from the complaints of families that there are missing people. The regime can say that they have fled the country, that they are in hiding, but how can you be sure they are not dead? And we have a slow repression, which has been going on since July. Play with unpredictability. They didn’t arrest you today, but they can do it tomorrow. Your home can be surrounded, you can be without internet or exposed by state vehicles. And in the meantime, we are hearing reports from those freed that they are applying torture. How to live with this uncertainty? Is very difficult.
Obviously people are afraid, in addition to the material situation, food and medicine, have worsened, making concerns limited, for many, for now, to solving these problems. The regime acts as usual. Repression, brutality, then a relaxation that allows you to leave the country or even helps you to leave the country. Then comes a sense of calm. The difference is that in fact something broke on July 11, and the next social explosion will be different.
In what sense? I insist that we must try to exhaust the civic and legal route, that is, ensure that what is in the Constitution is respected. And, in this sense, the release of political prisoners, an amnesty, is what we must seek. That’s why we’re working with the prisoners’ families. With them, we are preparing a document, to be taken publicly to the government, in order to pardon these penalties, with respect to minors. It is difficult for those outside Cuba to imagine that there is still a way to go through the institutional route, but I believe it is necessary to insist that this step be respected if we want to build citizenship. An open, disorganized and even more violent confrontation is of no use to us.
That’s why the November 15th movement was announced and convened in advance, because it responded to something that the Constitution guarantees us, the right to peaceful demonstration. It served to show the world that it was the regime that did not respect its own rules, which brutally repressed something that the Charter guarantees. We will do the same thing with this general request for amnesty for those who exercised the constitutionally guaranteed right to demonstrate and received absurdly disproportionate convictions and ill-treatment, including minors, something that is contrary to international treaties.
What if that doesn’t work? If we are going to take to the streets again, we have to go out peacefully, but not naively. We left like this on July 11th. We left as we were, with our faces uncovered, which allowed them to identify us and go after almost everyone who appeared in images. We went out with sandals, which don’t allow us to run a lot, with shorts, as we live here. Next time, I’ll defend a covered face, appropriate clothing, not to respond to violence, but not to be easy prey as we were.
Many questioned the prior announcement of the November 15 demonstration as the reason for its failure, for warning the regime of what would happen. Was the result as expected? Yes, in the sense that we show international public opinion that we are acting within a law of the regime itself —the 2019 Constitution guarantees the right of assembly— and we pressure the government to show itself even more brutal and to admit that the most ” human” or democratic system that the management wanted to sell was a sham.
And also in the sense of educating the new generations in civics. We’re not going to get anything overnight and we didn’t think we would on November 15th. But work here is slow, and the time is now to build civic awareness. Things take time, we have a generation driving the protests that want quick changes, I don’t think that’s the way.
Do you think that [o ex-líder do Archipiélago, grupo que virou o rosto das manifestação de 11 de julho] Yunior García, who made a deal with the regime and took refuge in Spain, did not understand this? We organized the 15N together, Yunior was present all the time, but he is one of those who think that with a demonstration a government is overthrown and a nation is built. I don’t judge your attitude as a human being, of not taking the harassment, of thinking about your family and ending up asking to leave. It can happen to anyone. But he was reckless, he wanted to change everything quickly. He saw that it wouldn’t be possible and left, frustrating an entire generation that saw him as an option. He has a legitimate right to leave if he can’t handle the pressure, but he did so in a way that he abandoned those who risked the movement.
Does it matter that there is still a Castro alive and supporting the Revolution? Only symbolically and for a generation. It shouldn’t be our immediate concern, which should be understanding the internal divisions and how to gain space where they show weakness. That’s why I call attention to reinforcing civility, not to cultivating brutality. We have to install more forcefully debates that the Revolution classified as being overcome, but which were always present, racism, for example. We are a racist society without a vigorous black movement. Women, who in Latin America are now advancing their rights, are not organized here either. These moves need to come.
Now, for example, there is an onslaught of churches, especially the evangelical one, against abortion and homosexual marriage. I’m not saying that we have to abandon the act of protesting against the totalitarian regime, but we need to build pillars of citizenship behind these demands, because we are talking about the Cuba of tomorrow. We took out the dictators and what do we have to build the country? That’s why I believe that the work is slow and that we have to move forward in different ways.
Manuel Cuesta Morua, 59
Graduated in history at the Universadad de la Habana, with a postgraduate degree in politics, economics and international relations, he was a professor at the same institution until he was expelled in 1991 due to his activism.
In 1993, he started working at the Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation and, in 2002, he founded the Arco Progressista, an anti-government social organization, today named Plataforma Nuevo País. He is a member of the Latin American Studies Association, based at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2016, he received the Ion Ratiu Award from the Woodrow Wilson Center. He is also the author of “Ensayos Progresistas from Cuba” (2014) and “Cuba, Poesia, Arte e Sociedade: Seis Ensaios” (2008), among other books.
