Independent group aims to open debate in Cuba
CARDENAS, Cuba – The former editors of one of Cuba’s few nongovernment-controlled media outlets have quietly restarted efforts to spur debate about the nation’s future, launching a series of public forums and plans for a new journal addressing the island’s most urgent problems.
The project, known as “Cuba Posible,” joins a handful of others in the small space between the uncritical state-run media and fiercely partisan dissident websites that have little reach inside Cuba.
Lawyer Roberto Veiga and journalist Lenier Gonzalez gained renown among Cuban intellectuals by transforming the Catholic church magazine Espacio Laical into a rare and influential forum for sociopolitical debate before the two men left last year amid an apparent church backlash over the publication’s aggressive coverage of current affairs.
The two men and their small circle of close collaborators say they are confident the project can provide a space for dialogue between government supporters and critics without running afoul of the island’s communist leaders.
“We hope that we’ll be heard and paid attention to in the world of politics,” said sociologist and project backer Aurelio Alonso. “We hope that what’s said won’t remain in a void, but will affect institutions and political players.”
First public forum draws academics
Funded by Norway’s University of Oslo, Cuba Posible is based out of the Christian Center for Reflection and Dialogue, an ecumenical church group focused on community projects that occasionally publishes newsletters and magazines from Cardenas, a midsize city about 95 miles east of Havana. Basing the new group there means it can use the center’s existing government permits rather than seek permission for a new independent publication.
“There have always been people inside the government who don’t like what we do and people who care about what we do,” Veiga said this week. “There are a variety of opinions but there’s no policy aimed at disrupting or battling us.”
The first public forum attracted dozens of academics and intellectuals and gave a hint of the group’s approach. Its central theme, “Cuba: Sovereignty and the Future,” was uncontroversial enough to avoid the risk of official ire. Participants avoided direct criticism of President Raul Castro or the island’s single-party system in place since the 1959 revolution. But some speakers, particularly those who rose from the audience to question speakers on panels, were unsparing in their evaluations of Cuba’s poor performance in a variety of sectors ranging from expanding the economy to updating educational curricula.
Gonzalez said the project’s founders were fierce defenders of Cuban sovereignty and wanted to improve the current system rather than see it overturned in a return to its pre-revolutionary past.
“We’re working to pose important questions, to maintain the ideal that a better country is possible, and it’s possible to achieve that among Cubans who think differently but have common values,” he said.
Plans in the works for publication
Prominent Cuban exile businessman Carlos Saladrigas, who participated in forums organized by Espacio Laical, said he believed that Cuba Posible could gain more influence than the two men’s former publication.
“For the moment their task is putting on the table ideas that require critical debate. Cuba has a lot of things to rethink,” Saladrigas said. “If they succeed in this process I think they’re going to greatly contribute to this dialogue between Cubans.”
Gonzalez, 33, and Veiga, 49, say they plan to publish their first journal by year’s end.
“We’ve strived from the beginning to have something that appeared impossible, and today is more possible, which is that people who think differently can share the same space and even work together,” Veiga said after the forum.