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A Game-Changer in Cuba

by Alejandro Bermudez 

According to the Communist Cuban government, there isn’t any racism in Cuba, just as there aren’t any major diseases or hunger. Everything is perfect on the island, and if people want to leave in droves it’s either because they are gusanos (worms) or victims of imperialist American propaganda.

Born in 1967, Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a black handyman trying to make a modest living as a mason and plumber. Unsurprisingly, though, he did not experience any of the goods allegedly delivered by Castro’s revolution.

So immediately after finishing his schooling, Zapata Tamayo, a practicing Catholic, joined different political parties and human rights movements, all of them illegal in Cuba. After several brushes with Castro’s police and a couple of short stints in prison, he was among the more than 100 political activists arrested during the brutal political crackdown of March 2003 known in Cuba as the “Black Spring.”

Like most of the political prisoners sentenced to ridiculously long prison terms during the crackdown, Zapata Tamayo was accused of petty crimes such as “disturbing the peace,” “fraud” and “public exhibitionism.” The last charge was the result of one of his previous arrests, when he was dragged from his house by the police in his underwear.

The government’s narrative – which is featured even on Wikipedia – claims that “his criminal record does not involve any political actions,” and that it was “only after his imprisonment that his mother, Reyna Luisa Tamayo, approached government opposition groups.”

But for anyone used to the childish, primitive lies of the Cuban government, it comes as no surprise that this narrative collides with the fact that Amnesty International named Zapata Tamayo as a prisoner of conscience, as did key dissident leaders such as Oswaldo Payá.

After six years in prison, Zapata Tamayo began a hunger strike on Dec. 3, 2009 to demand better treatment and the right to wear plain clothes instead of the designated prisoner uniform.

In response, prison authorities decided to deny him water for 18 days.

That was the beginning of the end. After Zapata Tamayo insisted on his rights in desperation, the same major who ordered that he shouldn’t receive water beat him with a club, producing a severe brain clot.

As the prisoner remained unconscious in his cell, Major Filiberto Hernández Luis realized that Zapata Tamayo was dying, and since that could cause trouble, decided to take him to the infirmary.

With Zapata Tamayo’s condition worsening, the Cuban political system realized it could not afford the death of a dissident, especially days before the crucial visit of Brazil’s President Lula da Silva.

But every single medical step was taken a day too late. He was transferred from the Kilo 8 prison to the Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana, but the efforts of the supposedly exceptional Cuban medical system were useless. In addition to the brain clot, he was experiencing kidney failure due to his dehydration. On February 23, 2010, at 3:30 p.m., Zapata Tamayo died.

What surprises me is that accounts of his ordeal, both the one from his mother, Reyna Luisa, and the one collected by a human rights group at the Kilo 8 prison, agree on the fact that during most of his time in prison, Zapata Tamayo was verbally abused with strong racial epithets.

At the time of his arrest, throughout his imprisonment, during the beatings at the Kilo 8 prison, and even when his corpse was delivered to Reyna Luisa, the expressions used to refer to him were continually charged with ferocious insults referring to the fact that he was black.

The painfully detailed report of Zapata Tamayo’s ordeal, released by the dissident “Cuban Democratic Directorate,” does not make an issue of the racial slurs but reproduces the threats received by the prisoner at Kilo 8. The vast majority of them have a racial component, and I didn’t find one that could be reproduced without being offensive.

A similar testimony comes from his mother, who visited him in prison every three months – the most she was allowed.

So much for the end of racism trumpeted by Castro’s revolution.

But this humble man, despised for being black even after his death, has become a dangerous liability for the Cuban government.

Because Zapato Tamayo’s death took place the same day Lula da Silva was visiting Havana, Raul Castro was forced to respond to journalists traveling with the Brazilian president and became the first Cuban authority to publicly express “regret” for the death of a dissident.

Of course, the official narrative continued once Lula left the country. Zapata Tamayo was described by the official press as “a common criminal falsely elevated to martyr status,” who went on a hunger strike because authorities would deny him a TV set, a stove and a phone in his cell ... Yeah, right!

But it was already too late. Spain’s socialist government, which has been trying to demonstrate that Cuba is “behaving” in order to keep Spanish money flowing into Cuba’s tourism industry, was forced to “demand explanations” under pressure from the local press. This places in jeopardy the cash flow Raul Castro desperately needs after Venezuela’s Chavez, with huge problems on his own, could not keep his word on solving Cuba’s financial problems.

Zapata Tamayo’s death has also forced the government to ease brutality against dissidents, especially after it was made public that two other prisoners of conscience are also in very bad health.

Oswaldo Payá, the most prestigious Cuban dissident and a devout Catholic, has urged dissidents in prison to stop hunger strikes since they are morally unacceptable.

But he has also recognized that the death of a humble, 42-year-old black construction worker is becoming a game changer in Cuba.

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)