Project Varela: 12 years later as important as ever

Twelve years ago today, carrying 11,020 signed petitions in support of the Varela Project, Oswaldo Paya, Antonio Diaz Sanchez, and Regis Iglesias walked with the bulky card board boxes labeled Project Varela to the Cuban National Assembly.



The Varela Project, named after the Cuban Catholic Priest Felix Varela, sought to reform the Cuban legal system to bring it in line with international human rights standards. They had followed the letter of the law in organizing the campaign and yet the dictatorship's response to a nonviolent citizen's initiative was to first coerce Cubans into signing another petition declaring the Constitution unchangeable and quickly passed it through the rubber stamp legislature without debating the Varela Project, which according to the Cuban law drafted by the dictatorship meant that it should have been debated by the National Assembly.



Less than a year later beginning on March 18, 2003 the Black Cuban Spring would begin with a massive crackdown on Cuba's civil society with many of the organizers of Project Varela, imprisoned and summarily sentenced up to 28 years in prison. The 75 activists who had been imprisoned with long prison sentences became known as the "group of the 75."

The dictatorship announced, at the time, that the Cuban dissident movement had been destroyed. First, the remaining activists who were still free continued gathering signatures and would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures on October 5, 2003. Furthermore, the wives, sisters and daughters of the activists who had been detained and imprisoned organized themselves into the "Ladies in White." A movement that sought the freedom of their loved ones and organized regular marches through the streets of Cuba, despite regime organized violence visited upon them.

The Economist in its December 14, 2005 issue published a conversation with Oswaldo Paya titled "An unsilenced voice for change" that outlined what had taken place:

Between 2001 and 2004, Mr Payá's movement gathered 25,000 signatures in a vain attempt to persuade Cuba's National Assembly to change the constitution to allow multi-party democracy. Activists of his Christian Liberation Movement made up more than two-thirds of the 75 dissidents and journalists rounded up and jailed for long terms in April 2003. [...] Spain is “complaisant” with Mr Castro's regime, Mr Payá says. “We need a campaign of support and solidarity with peaceful change in Cuba” of the kind that brought an end to apartheid in South Africa and to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.

It took over eight years, but the last of the group of the 75 were eventually released. Many were driven into exile but  a core group remain in Cuba and are still defiant. One  of the Project Varela leaders still active and mobilizing large numbers today is Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, but others  lost their lives defending human rights and dignity who had also gathered signatures for the Varela Project, such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
On July 22, 2012 all evidence points to a state security operation that ended the lives of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante. Now signatures continue to be gathered for Project Varela inside Cuba and everywhere for an international investigation into the deaths of Oswaldo and Harold.

Democratic Thought of Oswaldo Payá Teach-In: Is Cuba Changing?

 If what we do for Cuba, we do not do for love, better not do it.- Bishop Agustín Román

Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo, Sayli Navarro & Henry Constantin in La Ermita

Is Cuba Changing? Yes (Cubans) and No (Dictatorship)

The portrait of Bishop Agustín Román alongside the Virgin of Charity accompanied three young Cubans who have and continue to sacrifice much for Cuba's freedom. Friday night they took part in the “Peña del Pensamiento Democrático de Oswaldo Payá” that loosely translates into the "Democratic Thought of Oswaldo Payá Teach-In" held at the Bishop Agustín Román Salon. Eleven years ago Bishop Agustín Román had accompanied Oswaldo Payá in a gathering with the community in the same building in the Salon Varela.

Both have been called home and are no longer with us physically but last night they were there with us in spirit.

The three youths Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo, Sayli Navarro and Henry Constantin each gave their vision of the current situation on the island and prospects for real change in short presentations. The rest of the evening was spent in a question, comment and answer session that went on later into the night.

The conclusion that one arrives at after listening to the presentations and the exchange with the audience is that the Cuban people are changing but the Castro regime is not. The Castro brothers are doing what they've always done since 1959 adapt to changing circumstances in order to hang on to power by any means necessary.

After 54 years, Cubans are tired and want to be free, but the last free elections held in Cuba were in 1950. Imagine for a moment - 64 years without exercising the right to vote.

The legacy of Bishop Agustín Román and Oswaldo Payá is one of love and resistance to injustice. If Cuba is to achieve a lasting and positive change it will require their spirit of nonviolence and resistance to be embraced by a majority of Cubans along with the knowledge of how to carry it out using elements that are constructive and when need be obstructionist.

In that spirit we make a public request that in the future a series of  "teach-ins" on Oswaldo's nonviolent political thought along with a more profound examination of how to apply it in the present.