Who's Bugging Castro?
Meet the intractable dissident who provoked Cuba's alarming new crackdown on dissent

Oswaldo Paya is something Cuban president Fidel Castro has rarely, if ever, faced: a dissident as hardheaded as he is. When Castro took power in 1959, Paya was the only kid in his Havana primary school who refused to become a Communist Youth member. Rather than escape to Miami in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, he stayed in Cuba to work for democratic reform. Now his doggedness has prompted one of Castro's most ironfisted crackdowns: scores of Paya's fellow dissidents have been arrested for treason and given lengthy prison terms. Paya, 51, says he's undeterred. "We're the first nonviolent force for change this island has ever known," he told TIME by phone from Havana. "Castro can't crush that, no matter how hard he tries."

Paya, an engineer who bicycles to his job as a hospital-equipment technician, is also complicating George W. Bush's policy toward Cuba. The U.S. President is expected to give an important Cuba policy speech next week. Given the jailing of the dissidents and the stunning executions of three Cubans for the noncapital crime of trying to hijack a ferry to Miami last month, the Administration's natural inclination is to hammer El Comandante. But with some 40,000 Cubans in recent years having openly endorsed Paya's campaign for a popular vote on expanding freedoms, his Christian Liberation Movement (M.C.L.) has produced what most Cuba watchers agree is the first real chance for democratic change on the island.If Bush is too bellicose, he risks provoking further retaliatory measures by Castro, possibly even a crippling of Paya's movement.

Paya, a devout Roman Catholic whose model for action is the work of civil rights icons like Martin Luther King Jr., is in it for the long term. "Paya is unique," says Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch in Washington. "He is openly challenging Castro's system by using the system itself." Paya's most effective tool has been his petition drive, the Varela Project. Under Castro's 1976 constitution, a national referendum requires just 10,000 signatures. Paya's movement has so far gathered some 40,000, calling for a plebiscite on free speech, multiparty elections and increased private enterprise.

Castro peremptorily refuses to recognize the petitions. But they have spawned a grass-roots dissident network that finally spooked him into action. In March, with the aid of agents who had infiltrated the island's opposition cells, Castro rounded up more than 75 dissidents and journalists, most of them Paya lieutenants. In a speech on May 1, Castro branded them "mercenaries on the payroll of Bush's Hitler-like government," which he claimed is poised to invade Cuba.

At the same time, Paya, who was widely cheered during a visit to Miami this year, has helped bring that city's once rabidly anti-Castro politics toward a potentially more constructive center. Wresting the Cuba debate away from the pro-and anti-Castro extremists may be Paya's most helpful accomplishment. "This isn't about warmongering anymore," he says. "It's a duel between power and spirit." For now, Castro's power has the upper hand; but for four decades, Paya's spirit has been indomitable–and he insists he's not about to give up.

—from TIME, May 19, 2003

Questions

1. What has been Oswaldo Paya's most effective tool in pushing for change in Cuba?

2. Describe the goals and form of Paya's protest movement. What U.S. figure is one of his models?

3. Why is Paya complicating U.S. policy on Cuba?