Reuters
Wednesday, August 9, 2000; Page A02

MIAMI, Aug. 8—Two Cuban physicians who were imprisoned after defecting during a medical mission to Zimbabwe have arrived in Miami, ending a two-month journey to political asylum.

Well-wishers greeted Leonel Cordova Rodriguez, 31, and Noris Pena Martinez, 25, with cheers, red roses and the Cuban national anthem when the pair arrived from Sweden at Miami International Airport late Monday night.

Cordova said he and Pena were exhausted from the journey but excited to begin working on behalf of friends and relatives still living in their communist homeland.

"One day all Cubans will be free, not only in Miami but in Cuba too," Cordova said. "For my wife, my kids and my parents, we're going to do everything we can to bring them here. They're not out of danger while they're in the clutches of [Cuban President] Fidel Castro."

Pena said she "felt like a slave of the Cuban state" and was happy to receive asylum in the United States.

"I have defected, seeking freedom, just as the majority of young professionals in Cuba would like to enjoy in a free and democratic Cuba," she said.

The doctors went to Zimbabwe in April as part of Cuba's medical aid program for developing countries. After a month there, they criticized Castro in a Zimbabwean newspaper. On May 23, they applied for asylum at the Canadian Embassy, saying they chose to defect there because it was closer than the U.S. Embassy.

A day after applying for asylum, they were arrested by Zimbabwean agents and put on a plane bound for Cuba. When the plane made a stop in Johannesburg, South Africa, they slipped a note to the Air France pilot saying they had been kidnapped after criticizing Castro.

The pilot refused to fly them any further, and the South African authorities sent them back to Harare, where they were jailed without formal charge.

Cordova and Pena were allowed to travel to Sweden in June as a result of international pressure. From the start, they made clear their wish to go to the United States, where they have relatives, and U.S. officials granted them asylum.

Pena, a dentist, will stay with a cousin in Miami. Cordova will stay with a Cuban-born physician who was one of his professors at the University of Havana and now lives near Miami.

The Cuban government has condemned the two for their "shameful and immoral conduct" but has promised they would not be persecuted if they returned to Cuba.

Cordova, however, has said his family had been evicted by Cuban authorities and was staying with neighbors.

By Karen DeYoung

Thursday, August 3, 2000; Page A26

HAVANA—The thousand or so bedraggled books stacked on the dusty floor and sagging shelves of Ricardo Gonzalez's single, sunlit room are an eclectic mixture. There are some paperback novels, biographies of Jose Marti and the "Thoughts of Fidel Castro." There are Cuban authors banned for ancient and forgotten reasons, and a shelf of poetry.

The Jorge Manach Independent Library, named for a once-famous journalist in a different, long-ago Cuba, is open to lend, but there are few borrowers.

"Sometimes [Communist] Party youth come here," said Gonzalez, a former government journalist with a booming voice and a ready laugh. "Not many, because they're scared. We're really just a service to the community, but some in the community are scared. Of course, some people just come for the prohibited books, and ask for them by name. Whoever comes, no matter what they think, if we have the book, they can have it. I don't care what they take. People have the right to read."

Actually, getting your hands on a book that the government has decided you do not need to read can be difficult here. Although Cuba has an extensive network of state and school libraries and what Gonzalez says is one of the Third World's best technical collections, admission is often restricted, and access to certain volumes is determined by a need-to-know color code.

Having and reading books on your own is not a crime in Cuba. But it can draw always-risky attention. The government seems to decide on an ad hoc basis what is not permitted--the recent seizure of 11 books from another of Havana's independent lenders included a volume on Cuba's agricultural system and "Short Stories From Here and There," along with some Catholic magazines.

The first independent libraries began when a few intellectuals decided to take Castro at his word when the Cuban president said in a 1998 speech that "there are no banned books in Cuba--there just isn't any money to buy them." Gathering old, moldering volumes forgotten or hidden in pre-revolutionary collections, they set them on shelves and opened their doors.

Books are donated by Cubans leaving the country, and occasionally a sympathizer abroad will send a few new volumes by air freight--although that heightens the risk of arbitrary seizure by customs agents.

Gonzalez estimates that about 50 independent libraries are scattered around the country--some general interest, some devoted to specialized topics such as women's issues, the history of the North American Revolution, agrarian literature or music. Although each library is aware of others, they remain autonomous, lest they be perceived as forming a prohibited "movement." Other than occasional seizures or a rare shutdown, however, the government largely leaves them alone.

"This isn't a political undertaking, it's a cultural one," Gonzalez said. "But of course, in these conditions, it's hard to separate the coffee from the milk in your cafe con leche." In Cuba, all things are political.

"For instance, look at this book--'Mea Cuba,' a play on the words 'mea culpa.' It was written by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a winner of the Cervantes Prize. . . . The book was published in the early 1960s, but it is prohibited. He was the Cuban cultural attache in Belgium and broke with the government and started to criticize it. This book is his thoughts and remembrances" about pre- and post-revolutionary life here. The author, Gonzalez said, "is more controversial than the book."

"Here's 'The Works of Che Guevara,' and 'Nation and State in Liberal Spain'--that one's not allowed. If somebody comes in and asks about human rights, here's the official version, 'Cuba and Human Rights.' Here's another version, published by UNESCO. It's prohibited. I show them both, and I don't care which one they take."

"We have only two rules for books," he said. "No racism and no violence."

There are also books by Jorge Manach, including his biography of Marti, the father of Cuban liberation. Manach "was an author and a politician in the pre-revolution times," Gonzalez said. "In the 1920s, he was one of the greatest Cuban journalists--he was always intransigent against any dictatorship." When Castro was imprisoned by Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s, Gonzalez said, he wrote letters to Manach.

"But he died in exile in 1961," he said of the library's namesake. "For the Cuban government, it's like he never existed."