61ª General Assembly The Westin Hotel Indianápolis, Indiana 7 to 11 of October 2005

Raul Rivero
Indianapolis, Indiana
October 7 - 11, 2005

Dear Friends:

Happiness is fleeting, ethereal, and limited. It almost always leaves one feeling beholden and bewildered. I feel a certain happiness to be with you in person, as I have come here — feeling uncertain yet strongly committed — to bring you the truth about the 23 Cuban journalists who are behind bars for defending their right to work with dignity and professionalism in their own country.

This is the first time I have been able to attend a gathering of our organization, and to personally greet, embrace, and express my appreciation to you for all the years of solidarity, protection, and generosity — for all the moral support you have provided to those of us in Cuba who are trying to restore the shining beacon that journalism, when free of government control, always represents for society. It is also the first time I am reporting to you with the bittersweet taste that comes with distance.

The reports we sent out from Cuba in the late 20th century on journalists’ daily lives — the threats, the jailings, the long list of hardships visited on small groups that gradually spread across the Cuban landscape — were rather banal and imperfect, yet honorable and full of hope. We would use phones, tape recorders — and ultimately created small documentaries on the state of alternative journalism.

These reports were always marked by the tone of a personal testimony, which was later broadened and fleshed out by professional journalists outside Cuba such as Humberto Castelló and Wilfredo Cancio. This gave all our colleagues an overview of the landscape where we were working.

This period lasted about seven years. It began as a movement with a dozen correspondents and turned into a dynamic one involving more than a hundred men and women dedicated to providing news and opinion, six or seven small newsletters and magazines, and a continuous presence on the Internet, on foreign radio stations, and in news media in Latin America, the United States, and Europe.

I have been using the past tense but I also want to talk about the future. The wave of repression launched by the recalcitrant Castro dictatorship in 2003 suddenly changed this environment. Thirty journalists were arrested and sent to prison to serve more years than the regime itself can survive.

I now remember something that happened at one of the trials. After the prosecution had requested a 20-year prison sentence for a journalist, a state security officer went up to him and whispered, “Change your plea. You won’t last 20 years.”

“Neither will you,” the journalist replied, as he looked up at the ceiling of his cell.

You can rest assured, dear friends, that this was the spirit with which Cuban journalists faced the circus that was staged by a bunch of gangsters for their clowns and stooges to enforce the gag law.

Others, who were granted temporary release, decided to emigrate. But even more of them continued to work in a violent, tense, threat-filled environment, with the prison bars constantly poised to fall in front of their eyes.

There they are, in the streets and countryside of Cuba. That is where their stories, their news reports, their articles come from. We are at the dawn of a new era, where one of the most important issues in our coverage is prison life for those who had previously covered other issues. Our mission now is to provide help, support, protection, and encouragement every day to the journalists who remain active, and to keep these prisoners alive in the media, at international gatherings, in politicians’ offices. That is how we can prove our loyalty to those who, for defending their freedom, have been denied it.

In my dusty, rusty jail cell, nothing gave me more hope than to hear about friends from around the world who had published an article, written a news brief, or merely made mention of my prison sentence.

The worst thing for a prisoner is not the number of years he has left to serve; the worst thing is to be forgotten. We are morally obligated to see to it that they are never forgotten.

I would like to thank the Inter American Press Association — and in particular Danilo Arbilla, Ricardo Trotti, and Alberto Ibargüen — for its work and its unremitting solidarity with me and my family during the time I was in prison. I would like to reiterate that I am ready and willing to continue working within my modest ability for our organization, because I am convinced that the power of the IAPA will help us to reconquer freedom of expression in Cuba, after which democracy will not be far behind.

Thank you.