Demanding Decency

The “other face” of the Cuban revolution—the face of dissent—has been a grotesquely distorted one for more than four decades. Opposition to Fidel Castro is seen in the eyes of the world as being centred in the Cuban exile community of Miami, where inflammatory public melodramas such as the Elián González story are counterpointed with the clandestine machinations of Bay of Pigs plotters and Watergate burglars to create a distasteful mix of rabid right-wing politics, violence and greed. While there is some reality behind this caricature, and while it is true that the worst elements of the Miami community have been aided and abetted through the years by one Washington administration after another, the sad fact is that this reductionist perception of Miami has managed to obscure the genuine political struggle that has been taking place inside Cuba itself to establish the legitimacy of dissent and opposition to the Castro regime.

Those who believe that the existence of...