Only a few journalists were discreetly tipped off that something was about to happen at Havana airport on 7 August, as the visiting dissident Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo was about to embark on his return flight to Miami. Even Gutiérrez Menoyo's wife Gladys and their children were kept in the dark about his intention to announce that he was remaining in Cuba, to try and secure legal recognition for the opposition and prompt the democratisation of the island's political system.
Gutiérrez Menoyo had been a distinguished comrade-in-arms of Fidel Castro who achieved the distinction of being appointed a comandante de la Revolución. However, he soon became disenchanted with Fidel's rule, and in the mid-1960s he was arrested and convicted of conspiring to overthrow him. He was sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to 50 year's imprisonment, from which he was released into exile after 22 - thanks to the intercession of Spanish prime minister Felipe González.
In 1993 in Miami he founded an opposition organisation called Cambio cubano (`Cuban change'), advocating a peaceful transition to democracy in his homeland. Over the years he and his organisation drifted steadily away from other opposition groups both within and without Cuba. A measure of this estrangement was his bald statement on 7 August that `an independent opposition is not an opposition manipulated by the US Interests Section.'
Gutiérrez Menoyo says he brings to the debate proposals based on `social-democratic ideas of the kind prevalent in Europe.' In his view, democratisation in Cuba is inevitable, and it would be best if the transition were led by Fidel himself. `Maybe,' he says, `[Castro] is not yet fully aware that he is obliged to negotiate, but the time will come - I don't want to lose faith in that.'
He believes that the recent crackdown on dissidents that has brought down so much opprobrium on the Castro régime is a sign that the government feels fenced in. `In some such situations,' he says, `the moment may come when the thinking heads arrive at the conclusion that they must open up the game.'
Hostile reception
Gutiérrez Menoyo's sudden decision (which he says he had been planning for some time, secretly so as to catch the Cuban government off guard), did not go down well with other opposition groups. Elizardo Sánchez, leader of an illegal human rights commission in Cuba, hints at government involvement: `It could be that this was a decision taken at the highest level within the island.' Ninoska Pérez Castellón, leader of the Miami-based Consejo por la Libertad de Cuba (CLC) minced no words: `This has to have been approved by Fidel Castro, who is the dictator in Cuba.' Others, without adhering to this line of thinking, have been hurt by his blanket dismissal of other dissident groups.
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