Biden should push for the release of Cuba’s political prisoners, just as it did with Nicaragua’s regime
On Feb. 9, Nicaragua released — and forced into exile in the United States — 222 pro-democracy opposition politicians, journalists, academics, diplomats and student activists.
Most were rounded up when the regime launched a crackdown connected to the rigged presidential election that gave Nicaragua’s authoritarian leader Daniel Ortega a fourth term in 2021. After arriving on a flight from Managua to Washington, some expressed both relief and anguish over having left their country behind.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken credited “concerted American diplomacy” for the releases, which he called a “constructive step which opens the door to further dialogue between the United States and Nicaragua.” For his part, Ortega said good riddance. “We do not want any trace of those who are mercenaries to remain here in our country.”
The deliverance of so many innocent people whose only offense was working for democracy and human rights is a cause for celebration. But the releases also prompt questions: Will other authoritarian regimes exile critics in a bid for improved relations with Washington? And what would the United States seek from the Cuban regime, which holds more than 1000 political prisoners, according to the human-rights organization Prisoners Defenders.
THREAT TO REGIME
Certainly, the Nicaragua releases set a high bar for American efforts on behalf of political prisoners. “Everybody is on the plane … all of them,” the daughter of a freed former foreign minister exulted as she waited for her father’s arrival in the United States.
In Cuba, “everybody” would include rapper Maykel Castillo Perez, sentenced to nine years in prison on June 24, 2022. The charges against him included “defamation of state institutions.” His real offense, from the regime’s point of view, is refusing to be co-opted by the state: “I’ve become a threat to the totalitarian system,” he told Freemuse. “I don’t depend on any agency or any Cuban political party to make my art.”
Castillo, who performs as Maykel Osorbo, rose to prominence as the leader of the San Isidro Movement, formed in his Havana neighborhood to protest Decree 349 in 2018. Decree 349 requires prior approval for artistic expression, even in private venues, and outlaws what the regime considers unpatriotic, sexist, vulgar or obscene language. Certainly, Castillo’s uncompromising lyrics are part of “Diazcarao” — “Shameless” — a song that skewers Cuba’s leader Miguel DiazCanel. Written with fellow rapper El Funky, the song calls DiazCanel a “cheap copy of Fidel,” a “puppet with a tie” and “a shoddy communist.” It throws in a choice obscenity, to boot.
Worse, from the regime’s point of view, is Castillo’s co-authorship of the Latin Grammy-winning song “Patria y Vida,” a rebuke of Fidel Castro’s famous slogan, patria o muerte — homeland or death: “No more doctrines, we no longer shout homeland or death, homeland and life instead.” Castillo recorded his tracks clandestinely with El Funky (whose legal name is Eliecer Marquez Duany) and the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, and sent them to exiled Cuban musicians in Miami via WhatsApp.
SONG FUELS PROTESTS
Released in February 2021, the song went viral and later pulsed through massive island-wide protests against the Cuban regime during the summer that year. By then, Castillo, arrested that May, already was in prison. Otero was picked up on his way to the protests and sentenced to five years. El Funky went into exile.
Support for democracy and human rights serves America’s strategic, as well as moral, interests. To its credit, the Biden administration has made Castillo’s freedom a priority, naming him, and Cuban human-rights defender Jose Daniel Ferrer in its #WithoutJustCause diplomacy and social-media campaign. Castillo is known to be suffer health problems in jail and has asked to seek medical treatment abroad.
Speculation that the U.S. administration wants warmer relations with Havana intensified after an open microphone caught President Biden buttonholing U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, at the State of the Union address on Feb. 7, two days before the Nicaragua releases. “Bob, I gotta talk to you about Cuba.”
Menendez, Sen. Marco Rubio and other congressional champions of Cuban freedom surely will tell the president that for U.S.-Cuba relations to improve, the regime must not only release its political prisoners, but also make systemic changes, including the repeal of Decree 349 and the recently toughened penal code. This would allow Cubans to live in freedom in their own country.