Whose country is it, anyway?

A Cuban journalist questions the effectiveness of new U.S. measures aimed at regime change in the island nation -- and says they will merely result in more imprisonment of dissidents.

By Miriam Leiva

Topics:Cuba

Editor’s note: Florida and its Cuban-American community are as essential to President Bush’s current campaign as they were in 2000. On May 6, Bush announced new, draconian measures tightening the embargo against Fidel Castro’s Cuba, claiming they would help lead to regime change there. Visits to Cuba from Cuban family members, for example, have been cut from once a year to once every three years. Almost all contacts with U.S. universities have been ended, and all high school visits have been prohibited. (Sen. John Kerry has called for an end to the travel ban.) At the same time, Bush is increasing funding for Radio Marti, which beams anti-Castro messages from Florida.

Among the leading Cuban dissidents are journalist Miriam Leiva and her husband, Oscar Espinosa Chepe, an economist and journalist, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the height of Cuba’s crackdown against dissidents in the spring of 2003. His wife has campaigned ceaselessly for his release.

In the following essay, Miriam Leiva explains her and other dissidents’ strong disagreement with Bush’s new policy. She e-mailed her article to the Center for International Policy in Washington during a period of limited Internet access. It is published exclusively by Salon.

- – - – - – - – - – - -
By Miriam Leiva

May 24, 2004 | HAVANA — For which Cuba — and for whose Cuba — was the Bush administration’s plan to hasten reform in Cuba written? Speaking neither for the Castro government, which oppresses us, nor for Miami’s Cuban community, which uses our suffering to advance its own ends, I am forced to ask: Who will faithfully represent the Cuban people and Cuba’s political dissidents? Or shall we remain hostage to the agendas of others on both sides of the Florida Straits?

Perhaps with good intentions, President Bush announced his plan for a transition to a free Cuba two weeks ago. The plan entails a series of measures supposedly designed to help Cuban dissidents and hurt the Castro government. But did the Bush administration ask for the opinion of internal dissidents when the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba crafted its report? No. Will the measures hurt the Castro regime? No. Instead, the Cuban people will suffer from the effects of the measures, and more political dissidents could be sent to prison.

According to the commission’s report, millions of dollars will be allocated to assisting Cuba’s dissidents. But this money will only serve as evidence for the Cuban government to crack down on those who receive it. The reality is that the majority of the money will stay in Florida — and we will go to prison.

Remember that 75 prisoners of conscience from Castro’s repressive crackdown in March 2003 were accused of being mercenaries at the service of the United States. The pretext for their arrest was the “workshops” held in the home of James Cason, who runs the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. The majority of dissidents did not participate, but American support for the dissidents, however well intentioned, helped land them in jail.

Fidel Castro shot down two planes in 1996, killing four people and forcing President Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton law (the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996), which expanded the U.S. embargo. The majority of dissidents do not support the embargo or any measures to tighten it. Still, dissidents were accused by the Cuban government of supporting the Helms-Burton law. What will the reaction be to Bush’s new plan? Didn’t anyone advise the president of the risk these new measures would pose to us?

This plan will not punish Castro; it will punish dissidents and their families.

Among the measures is a new restriction on travel, which will hurt the Cuban people more than it will hurt Castro. Unbelievably, Cuban-Americans, who previously were able to come to Cuba once a year, will now be able to visit Cuba to see family members only once every three years.

Other Americans need a special license from the Department of the Treasury to visit Cuba for any purpose — even humanitarian missions. This situation is similar to that faced by Cubans, who cannot travel outside the island without permission from the Cuban government. Those who oppose the government rarely receive this permission. In this regard, both countries violate the rights of their citizens.

Make no mistake: The Cuban people are exhausted by the rule of one leader for 45 years. But the 44-year-old embargo has only benefited Castro, who uses it as a justification for his abuse of power.

I ask again, Who is listening to us? Castro won’t listen; he continues to run our great nation as if it were his finca, a vast landholding to be administered at his will. His renegade relatives and enemies in Florida wish to take the finca back, but just for themselves. Between Castro on one side and activists in Miami on the other are the Cuban people, treated as if they were cattle. We are not entitled to an opinion; we only bear the right to be whipped.

Cuban society is changing, and it is we — Cubans on the island — who are forging the new civil society. We are thankful for the solidarity of others and do not wish to exclude Cubans of the diaspora who honor our human rights and our sovereignty. But outside help needs to come in forms that benefit our mission, not in ways that work against it.

I say these things knowing full well that I may be the next victim, and if so, that perhaps there won’t be a campaign to save me because I dared to speak this truth.

But I am angered now more than ever. Is winning Florida in the presidential election worth so much that a small group of people who have no direct contact with Cuba’s internal reality are allowed to determine the policies of the world’s most powerful country? The irony of the situation is this: Extremism in Miami and extremism in the White House ultimately serve to fuel extremism in Havana. Fidel must be laughing.

Poor Cuba!

: Miriam Leiva is vice president of the Manuel Marquèz Sterling Society of Independent Journalists. Her husband, Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence and is in poor health, was among the 75 dissidents jailed last spring. More Miriam Leiva

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Cuba’s private property revolution

Raul Castro legalizes the buying and selling of private property. What does it mean for the island's future?

By Justin Elliott

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Cuba's President Raul Castro (Credit: Desmond Boylan / Reuters)

Topics:Cuba

This month, the government of Cuba announced a new law that will allow citizens to buy and sell property, marking what the New York Times called “a major break from decades of socialist housing.”

The move is a sign that President Raul Castro is serious about pushing through market-oriented policy changes in the country that has seen socialist rule since the revolution in 1959. And it comes in the context of a slight liberalization of Cuba policy by President Obama, who told journalists in late September that “what we’ve tried to do is to send a signal that we are open to a new relationship with Cuba if the Cuban government starts taking the proper steps to open up its own country — and provide the space and the respect for human rights that would allow the Cuban people to determine their own destiny.”

Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, answered my questions on what the new property law means for the future of Cuba.

What exactly does the new law do, and how radical a change is this?

This is a significant change. A free market in housing has not existed in Cuba since 1959. While Cubans had homes, they could not legally buy or sell them. They could swap their residences with others in an informal market. But these transactions required approval by a bureaucracy and often involved payments under the table which were against the law. Under the new rules, the bureaucracy mostly vanishes, homes can be bought and sold normally, and the government will collect a transaction tax.

Do we have a sense of how Cubans feel about this change?

As one Cuban said to us, this change has been long awaited and long desired by the Cuban people. Cuba has a housing shortage. Several generations of the same families are often crowded into one dwelling, subdivided among them. The housing shortage discourages family formation, and even divorced couples sometimes have to live together because they have no other place to go. Giving Cubans the right to buy and sell their homes will increase mobility, foster capital formation, spur activities like home construction and remodeling, and give Cubans greater choices in where they live (and with whom they live!). This is a big deal.

Can you explain how the law came about?

This reform is something that Cubans have wanted for some time. It was a subject that arose time and again during the debate that President Raul Castro sparked in Cuba about economic reform. It was approved in April 2011 during a meeting of Cuba’s Communist Party. The law was finally issued in November of this year.

Does the new law presage other major reforms by the Raul Castro government?

One analyst referred to the reform process in Cuba as “relentless gradualism,” by which he meant the government would “roll out” reforms not all at once but on a steady and consistent basis. They have difficult issues ahead of them — including the decision already made to lay off from state payrolls hundreds of thousands of workers and the need to merge Cuba’s system of dual currencies. The idea is for a process of stable transition, and bringing the population along as changes — the easier and the harder ones – are made.

Can you give a quick update on Obama’s policy toward Cuba?

Publicly, President Obama has positioned himself as a skeptic – saying that reforms are good but he hasn’t seen the results yet. On a policy level, however, his decisions to gradually loosen restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba are in fact acting as supports for the economic reform process. For better or worse, the administration’s strategy is to try and do good things without exciting excess opposition from U.S. hardliners.

: Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott

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Why we’re not seeing a “Cuban Autumn”

Dissidents took heart at the successes of the Arab Spring, but pro-democracy protests aren't gaining traction

By Nick Miroff, GlobalPost

A dissident signs the letter "L" for the Spanish word "libertad" or freedom as he is detained by police during a procession celebrating Cuba's patron saint in Havana, Cuba, Thursday Sept. 8, 2011

Topics:GlobalPost, Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba — The uprisings that have rocked the Middle East this year appear to be inspiring a new wave of protests on this island.

But while the Arab Spring is still in full effect in many countries, opponents of the Castro government have gained little momentum for a “Cuban Autumn.”

In recent weeks, anti-government activists have staged several public demonstrations in Havana and eastern Cuba. News and video clips of the events were posted on social-networking sites and broadcast on Miami television channels.

They show small groups of activists banging cookware, chanting anti-Castro slogans and “Freedom!” until police and state-security agents arrive to whisk them away.

In some of the videos, larger crowds of Cubans stand around watching the protesters, but they do not join in.

The incidents come after a period of relative calm that followed the Castro government’s move last year to release scores of imprisoned political prisoners, with the Catholic Church playing a mediating role. The amnesty briefly ameliorated criticisms by Western governments and human-rights groups of Cuba’s one-party socialist system and its treatment of non-violent dissenters.

Now activists are once more testing Raul Castro’s tolerance for public protest — and whether the tactics used by tweeting insurgents in the Middle East could spread anti-government sentiment here.

So far: not so much.

One disadvantage often cited by Cuban activists is that they operate at a significant technology deficit. The island is one of the least-connected countries in the world, and though many young people have mobile phones, most lack access to Facebook, Twitter and video-sharing sites because of internet restrictions and scarce bandwidth.

Anti-Castro activists on the island are also viewed suspiciously or with outright hostility by many Cubans, even those who have lost faith in Cuba’s socialist model. State media broadcasts frequently show them meeting with U.S. diplomatic officials, depicting them as “counterrevolutionaries,” “mercenaries” and “opportunists” who are out to make a buck or get political asylum abroad.

Many others here remain committed to Cuba’s system and its revolutionary ideals, even as the free health care, education and other benefits the government provides continue to diminish.

But dissidents also say Cuban authorities are escalating their attacks to intimidate others from joining their pro-democracy efforts. In August, police violence against peaceful protesters reached its highest level in recent years, according to the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation, an anti-Castro group that the tracks political arrests and detentions. Nearly twice as many activists have been detained so far this year compared to the same period in 2010, the group said, including 130 short-term detentions over the weekend.

The Cuban government has challenged those charges, accusing the group of padding its lists with fake names.

Castro opponents do not claim the Cuban government stoops to the type of methods that have been used by regimes in the Arab world, where activists are raped, tortured and murdered, and where protests are commonly met by volleys of police gunfire.

But state-security officials can plainly be seen coordinating counter-protests by government loyalists, who often surround dissidents and shout epithets at them for hours on end, sometimes accosting them physically. Security agents typically stand between the two sides to keep things from getting too rough.

When Cubans protest in public spontaneously, as some of the recent videos show, police quickly swoop in to arrest the demonstrators and haul them away, though the activists are often released several hours later.

Cuba’s Catholic church, which played a central role in securing the release of more than 100 jailed activists over the past year, issued a carefully worded statement last week that condemned violence against “defenseless” people.

But Church spokesman Orlando Marquez also said in the statement that the Cuban government told the church “no one at the national level” had ordered attacks on protesters.

Cuban state television has aired footage of the protests, claiming the incidents were part of a “media campaign” against the island. It called the demonstrations acts of “public disorder” that were organized by U.S.-supported “mercenaries” and planned in coordination with American officials.

“The goal is to create a climate of tension that will justify aggressions against Cuba,” the report said.

While Cuba’s economy continues to struggle, there has not been the kind of broader unrest on the island that sparked street protests during the post-Soviet crisis of the 1990s.

Raul Castro has eased state control over the economy since taking over for his older brother in 2006, allowing for new private businesses and pending reforms that would permit Cubans to buy and sell homes and cars for the first time in half a century.

Castro has also encouraged Cubans to vent their frustrations — within limits — through established channels like workplace forums and neighborhood meetings. Criticizing state institutions and government bureaucracy is no longer taboo, but organized opposition and public protests — like the recent demonstrations — remain out of bounds.

Since most of the dissidents freed over the past year opted to leave Cuba for Spain as part of an arrangement with the Madrid government, the latest rounds of protests may also be an effort by activists to remain visible, particularly to supporters abroad.

Cuba’s most famous online anti-government activist, Yoani Sanchez, sends out cascades of tweets from her mobile phone, including information about protests. Her blog, Generation Y, is no longer blocked on the island by the government, but many young Cubans who manage to get online aren’t necessarily inclined to use their precious bytes on political sites.

A high-speed undersea data link to Venezuela completed this summer with much fanfare is supposed to come online in the next few months, increasing Cuba’s bandwidth by a factor of 3,000. Its debut has been repeatedly delayed, adding to perceptions that Cuban authorities are wary of its power, even though they have already announced it will not be used to deliver private internet access to Cuban homes.

U.S. officials appear to view communication technology as the key to sparking political change on the island. In a leaked 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable that recently surfaced, the top American official in Havana, Jonathan Farrar, urged the lifting of restrictions on software downloads in Cuba, where Microsoft and other American companies have blocked access to comply with anti-terrorism statutes. Such restrictions, Farrar argued, work “directly against U.S. goals to advance people-to-people interaction.”

Bringing more technology, wrote Farrar at the time, could “help facilitate Iran-style democratic ferment in Cuba.”

: Nick Miroff is a freelance journalist and student at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. More Nick Miroff

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The toy cat that escaped Cuba

When my family fled, I could only bring one thing with me to my new life. Now, I can't let it go

By Jose R. Alonso

The author's toy rubber cat, Hebertico

Topics:One Person's Trash, Cuba, Life stories, Real Families

I was born in Cuba in the midst of the fall of one dictator, Fulgencio Batista, and the rise of another, Fidel Castro. My father was a sergeant in the army of the former and an enemy of the state of the latter. Through a shuffling of paperwork that was uncommonly fast for a pre-digital age military bureaucracy, my father’s army discharge was expedited and he retired to take over the family business. His retirement was without benefits since regimes that overthrow other regimes have a problem honoring their enemies’ pension plans. But at least my father was able to leave alive, intact and without having to spend time in one of Castro’s prisons.

For some time things were OK. My father took over his father’s butcher shop, and my mother took care of me and my older sister. I took to what babies did best: eat, sleep and soil my diapers. Accompanying me in my crib, I had many stuffed animals, but I took a fancy to a small rubber toy cat. When I could talk, I named him Hebertico. No one is sure why I came up with that name but it stuck.

As Castro’s grip tightened over the small island nation, the situation began to change. Neighbors started to disappear. Some went to “El Norte” (the United States). They would leave by plane, or by boats or makeshift rafts. Others were sent to prison or forced labor camps for crimes against the state, and still others faced the firing squad. Most of those people were turned in by neighborhood spies.

These happenings did not affect my family at first. However, soon state rations were being imposed on everything, including food. As the sole proprietor of his business, my father didn’t feel he had to comply with those rules when it came to taking food to his family. But local spies reported my dad just the same. Soon Castro’s “soldiers” — more like armed thugs, really — started to stop by our house when my father was at work, and threaten my mother. By the time I was 4 years old, my parents decided to leave the country.

In those days, regardless of how you got out of Cuba, it was done in a clandestine manner. My mother didn’t even have a chance to tell her parents we were leaving. She just visited them the day before we departed, made some plans for later on in the week, and left my grandparents’ home for the last time.

It was around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis that my parents decided to leave the country. My father’s sister and her family lived in New York City and they were able to sponsor us. On the day we left, we went to the airport where we had to endure endless lines to clear an infinite number of checkpoints. The stations served as a series of humiliating searches, which Cubans leaving the country were forced to undergo. Castro’s government wanted to make sure these “gusanos” (worms or caterpillars), as we were called, did not leave with government property — that is, money, personal jewelry, personal clothing or anything of value. In short, we were only allowed to leave with the clothes on our backs. The only jewelry my mother was able to take was her wedding band. My older sister was permitted one baby doll. I was allowed to take Hebertico.

However, one of the female “inspectors” was convinced that my mother was trying to smuggle more jewelry. After a rigorous pat-down that would shame any American TSA employee, the inspector took Hebertico from my hands and shook him rigorously. Not convinced that my favorite toy was not hiding any of Cuba’s “treasures,” the inspector took a pocket knife and cut a gash into Hebertico’s side. I watched as this “Hero of the Revolution” performed his “duty.”

It was an act of spite — Hebertico is hollow and made of rubber. Before the gash, the only hole he had was the tiny one that came from the manufacturer. It would have been hard to hide anything in him.

After more waiting and harassment, we were allowed to board the plane. The flights had no assigned seats — you just grabbed the first one you could find. I sat with my mother toward the front of the plane; my father and sister toward the back. As a final “bon voyage,” it was common for some of Castro’s soldiers to board the plane, walk up and down the aisle, seize an unlucky passenger, and drag him or her off the plane. As we settled into our seats, my mother grabbed my hand. I looked up at her and saw beads of sweat drip down the side of her face and her eyes bulging with fear. Three “soldiers” boarded our plane and proceeded to walk down the aisle. Then we heard a scream and the thud of a rifle’s butt against flesh.

My mother squeezed my hand tighter. It hurt, but I did not cry. With my free hand, I gripped Hebertico for comfort. Moments later, the soldiers dragged a dazed man with a bloody face off the aircraft. A woman from the back of the plane screamed profanities at them. They yelled back that if she didn’t shut up that they would take her too. Her children cried for her to sit down; she did. The door to the plane closed, the engines started and we took off. My mother released her grip on my hand as tears streamed down her face. I clutched Hebertico.

After a brief stop in Miami, the Freedom Tower or “El Refugio” as we called it, we arrived in New York to start a new life in a strange land.

Eventually, my father found gainful employment and we were able to lead a stable working-class life. He never tried to start a business in New York; he just resigned himself to working in a meat-packing warehouse.

Over the years, Hebertico slept in my bed by my side. As I got older, I would hide him in my pillowcase. Whenever I felt scared in the middle of the night, I would reach for my pillow and clutch Hebertico. In my teen years, I placed Hebertico in the top drawer of my dresser. To this day, he resides in the top drawer of my armoire.

You might wonder how a rubber toy could be a hero. Hebertico was my hero because he was the only constant in my life during those early years. Growing up in a strange land, he was a faithful compass when my world was caught up in a tornado. He was and remains a link to my past.

Many spring cleanings have come and gone and I have parted with many things. Hebertico is the one possession I can never part with. I plan to give him to my daughter, so she can pass him on to her children.

: More Jose R. Alonso

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Cuba’s Fidel Castro: I quit as party chief 5 years ago

Castro's bizarre announcement raises questions about how Cuba has been led since Raul Castro took over in 2006

By Paul Haven, Associated Press

In this photo downloaded from the state media Cubadebate web site, Cuba's Fidel Castro meets with a group of Cuban and foreign intellectuals who are attending Havana's International Book Fair, in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday Feb. 15, 2011. (AP Photo/Roberto Chile, Cubadebate) (Credit: AP)

Topics:Cuba, Latin America

Fidel Castro said Tuesday he resigned five years ago from all his official positions, including head of Cuba’s Communist Party, a pre-eminent job in the island’s political pantheon that he was thought to still hold.

It was the first time the 84-year-old revolutionary icon has said he no longer heads the Communist Party, which he has led since its creation in 1965. The Communist Party website still lists him as first secretary, with his brother President Raul Castro listed as second secretary.

The declaration raised questions about just how much power Fidel Castro has been wielding behind the scenes — with or without a formal post — and to what extent Raul Castro has had true freedom to make his own decisions.

Castro wrote in an opinion piece that when he got sick in 2006, “I resigned without hesitation from my state and political positions, including first secretary of the party … and I never tried to exercise those roles again.”

He said that even when his health began to improve, he stayed out of state and party affairs “even though everyone, affectionately, continued to refer to me by the same titles.”

Castro’s comments come just weeks ahead of a crucial Communist Party Congress, in which it was widely expected that a new party leader would be picked — presumably his brother. The Congress also is tasked with endorsing a series of major economic changes Raul Castro has enacted since taking over the presidency, including opening the island up to limited private enterprise.

“I think it’s significant, because if nothing else it’s Fidel Castro sending a clear message that his brother is in charge of the country,” said Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the Washington-based nonprofit Cuba Study Group, which supports increasing economic and academic exchanges with the island. “He’s setting the ground ahead of the party congress for there to be a smooth transition.”

The elder Castro stepped down in 2006 due to a serious illness that almost killed him. In an official proclamation released on July 31, 2006, Fidel Castro provisionally delegated most of his official duties to his brother — including the presidency and head of the party.

In February 2008 he announced he was officially stepping down as president, and Raul Castro was formally picked to succeed him by the country’s parliament a few days later. But no reference was made to Fidel leaving his party post, and Cuban officials and ordinary people have referred to him as the party leader ever since.

While the government historically has focused on the day-to-day running of the country, the party is tasked with guiding the Cuban people on their path to communism. In practice, no major policy can be passed without the party first agreeing.

The opinion piece, which was published on the state-run Cubadebate website overnight and in newspapers Tuesday morning, caught many people by surprise.

“It’s incredible. Nobody can believe it,” said Magaly Delgado, a 72-year-old Havana retiree who was clutching a copy of Granma, the Communist Party daily. “I always thought he was still in charge. … He never said he had resigned.”

The Cuban government had no immediate comment on the bizarre revelation, which raises fundamental questions about assumptions that have been made about how Cuba has been led since Raul Castro took over.

Many were slow to acknowledge at first that Raul Castro held any power at all and doubted that the quiet and unassuming younger brother could step out from the shadow of his larger-than-life older sibling. In those initial days, Raul said he would make decisions in consultation with Fidel, though he has not repeated that in recent years.

Doubters — including many in the Cuban-American exile community — pointed to Fidel’s leadership of the party as evidence the arrangement was just for show, despite the fact the elder Castro has since revealed that his 2006 illness put him on the brink of death.

If Fidel’s statement Tuesday is taken at face value, it would suggest that his brother has been flying solo since he took over in 2006, at least officially.

Castro’s traditional foes in the exile community reacted with bewilderment.

“It shows the absolute lack of transparency because for the last five years everyone in Cuba, everyone in the world, thought he was the head of the Communist Party, so it shows how absolutely closed and totalitarian and personal that dictatorship is,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of the Washington-based U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC. “At the end of the day, only he knew he wasn’t in power.”

Despite the drama of the announcement, it is not clear what importance it has on an island ruled by the force of Fidel Castro’s personality for many decades.

In the opinion piece, Fidel indicates that, with or without formal titles, he will always be an intellectual force in the revolution, a refrain he has uttered several times in recent years.

“I remain and will remain as I have promised: a soldier of ideas, as long as I can think and breath,” he writes.

While nobody was expecting Fidel Castro’s announcement to come the way it did — as a fait accompli thrown into a long opinion piece that otherwise focuses on criticism of President Barack Obama — speculation has been rampant that he would soon step down.

If the 79-year-old Raul Castro moves up to the top spot, it will give the Cuban leaders a chance to pick someone without their famous last name to hold the No. 2 position, potentially tapping a would-be successor after 52 years of uninterrupted rule since they ousted Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

In interviews and public appearances in recent months, Fidel Castro has intimated that he no longer has much say in party business. When he met with Cuban students in November, one asked for his thoughts on the upcoming Congress.

Castro politely brushed the question aside, telling the students he was not meeting with them in his capacity as party chief.

By way of explanation, he added: “I got sick and I did what I had to do: delegate my duties. I cannot do something if I am not in a condition to dedicate all my time to it.”

——

Associated Press writers Laura Wides in Miami, Florida, and Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana contributed to this report.

: More Paul Haven

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Fidel Castro says US plans NATO invasion of Libya

Former Cuban leader says the United States has designs for Libya's oil, will use violence as pretext to invade

By Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press

Fidel Castro says US plans NATO invasion of Libya

Topics:Africa, Cuba

Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro said Tuesday that unrest in Libya may be a pretext for a NATO invasion. Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega has jumped to the support of the embattled leader of the North African nation, saying he telephoned to express solidarity.

The protests sweeping across Libya have created challenges for the Latin American allies of Moammar Gadhafi.

Leftist governments in the Americas have long embraced him as a fellow fighter against U.S. influence in the world. Gadhafi has responded over the years by awarding the Moammar Gadhafi International Human Rights Prize to Castro and Ortega, as well as to Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia.

His relations with Chavez are so warm that rumors that he was headed to Venezuela swept the world on Monday. Gadhafi took to television late Monday to deny them.

Ortega said he had kept in communication with Gadhafi and expressed solidarity due to the “moments of tension” Libya is experiencing. State radio carried excerpts of his remarks on Tuesday.

“There is looting of businesses now, there is destruction. That is terrible,” Ortega said during a commemoration Monday of Nicaraguan hero Augusto Cesar Sandino. He said he told Gadhafi that “difficult moments put loyalty to the test.”

Ortega said he had also ordered Nicaragua’s security forces not to repress protesters, though he did not say Gadhafi had done so.

Protesters emboldened by the fall of pro-Western strongmen in Egypt and Tunisia have taken to the streets of Libya, where they were confronted by Libya’s security forces. Human rights groups say that more than 200 people have died and witnesses said bodies were left in the streets of Libya’s capital on Tuesday.

Gadhafi appeared on television vowing to fight on to his “last drop of blood” and roared at his supporters to go after opponents and “attack them in their lairs.”

European governments and U.S. leaders have denounced the crackdown, but Castro used a column published Tuesday by Cuban state news media to say it was too early to criticize Gadhafi.

“You can agree or not with Gadhafi,” Castro said. “The world has been invaded by all sorts of news … We have to wait the necessary time to know with rigor how much is fact or lie.”

But he did urge protests of something he says is planned: A U.S.-led invasion of the North African nation aimed at controlling its oil.

“The government of the United States is not concerned at all about peace in Libya and it will not hesitate to give NATO the order to invade that rich country, perhaps in a question of hours or very short days,” Castro wrote.

“An honest person will always be against any injustice committed against any people in the world,” Castro said. “And the worst of those at this instant would be to keep silent before the crime that NATO is preparing to commit against the Libyan people.”

Chavez himself has said nothing publicly about the disturbances in Libya, though his Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro issued a statement on Monday saying he had spoken with his Libyan counterpart by telephone to express hopes Libya can find “a peaceful solution to its difficulties … without the intervention of imperialism, whose interests in the region have been affected in recent times.”

Morales also has said nothing.

Associated Press writers Carolina Herrera in Managua, Nicaragua, Fabiola Sanchez in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

: Andrea Rodriguez is a San Francisco writer. More Andrea Rodriguez

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