Remembering the 1998 - 2003 Cuban Spring

An important period in Cuban history.

 

11,020 Varela Project signatures turned in on May 20, 2002

Past is prologue, and understanding this past provides insights into the future.

 

Nineteen years ago on March 18, 2003 a crackdown began in Cuba on the eve of the United States going to war in Iraq. Scores of nonviolent Cuban dissidents were rounded up and subjected to political show trials. 75 were condemned to lengthy prison terms of up to 28 years in prison. 

 

This was the end of a Cuban Spring that began in 1998. There were less than 50 acts of civil disobedience in Cuba reported in 1997.  In 2003 this had increased to over 1,300 acts of civil disobedience.

 

Over a five year period the dissident movement grew and increased in its activism despite continuing regime repression.

 

The high point of this Cuban Spring was reached on May 10, 2002 when Oswaldo Paya, Antonio Diaz Sanchez, and Regis Iglesias walked with the bulky card board boxes labeled Project Varela to the Cuban National Assembly. The card boxes held 11,020 signed petitions in support of the Varela Project.

 

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. The petition organizers had followed the letter of the law in creating the campaign.

 

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.

 

Nun places sun flowers to images of 75 Cubans jailed in 2003

 

This culminated in the crackdown outlined in the first paragraph.  Three documentaries capture this span of time, and are required viewing for Cuba watchers.

 

Voices from the Isle of Freedom (2001), a documentary of People in Need in cooperation with Czech Television. It was directed and filmed by Petr Jančárek. It covers events in Cuba during 2000 and 2001.

 

Dissident: Oswaldo Payá and the Varela Project (2002), a documentary of the National Democratic Institute "created a documentary about the Varela Project which premiered in several film festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City in May 2003.

 

The Cuban Spring (2003), a documentary by Carlos González, today of the Casla Institute and captures events in Cuba on the eve of, during, and after the March 18, 2003 crackdown in Cuba.