Freedom Fast
The Oscar Biscet project.

ovember 3, 2001, marked the second year that Afro-Cuban physician Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet has been a prisoner of conscience in Communist Cuba, one of the seven regimes classified by the U.S. State Department as a sponsor of terrorism (and the closest of them to America). Dr. Biscet has been ripped from his family because he will not countenance the enslavement, systematic terror, and mass murder Fidel Castro has perpetrated for 43 years. (National Review has covered Dr. Biscet. See Jay Nordlinger's "Who Cares about Cuba?" June 11, 2001.)

From November 3 to November 27, I fasted to protest Dr. Biscet's subjugation and to highlight Cuba's captivity. The 24-day duration of the fast corresponded to Dr. Biscet's 24 months as a prisoner of conscience.

If I had to summarize the effect of the fast in one word, it would be "reinforcement" — reinforcement of my conviction that totalitarian malice undergirds Communist Cuba, and reinforcement of my conviction that the Black Left is morally vacuous.

Vladimir Nabokov noted that reading Osip Mandelstam's poetry from the gulag "enhances one's healthy contempt for Soviet ferocity." Meeting the former captives of Castro's despotism does likewise. Among those I met during the fast were:

Eusebio Peñalver, a jovial Afro-Cuban who fought against Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship and then endured nearly 30 years in prison for participation in the anti-Castro Escambray resistance. (Pascal Fontaine provides an overview of this heroic, largely unknown chapter of Cuban history in The Black Book of Communism.)

Emilio Izquierdo Jr., sent to the Military Units to Aid Production, a.k.a. the UMAPs, a.k.a. slave labor camps.

Dr. Alberto Fibla, in prison from 1962 until 1988 for his opposition.

Dr. Jose Carro, former president of the Cuban Pediatric Society in Exile. Dr. Carro was part of Cuba's Kindertransport, Operation Pedro Pan. (For a history of Operation Pedro Pan, see Victor Andres Triay's Fleeing Castro: Operation Pedro Pan and the Cuban Children's Program.) His wife, Laida, is a retired art instructor and human-rights activist who has indefatigably highlighted Dr. Biscet's subjugation. (Mario Ramirez has likewise championed Dr. Biscet through www.Biscet.org.) She fled with her family in 1962. Her uncle, Plinio Prieto Ruiz, fought with Eusebio Peñalver in Escambray. The regime executed him on October 12, 1960. Dr. Carro and Mrs. Carro's mother, Dr. Liana Prieto Arcia, serve on the Committee for the Human Rights of Children that produced the excellent new documentary, Made in Cuba: Children of Paradise. (Made in Cuba contains footage of Dr. Biscet.)

Doctors Alberto and Julia Marante. Dr. Alberto Marante went into exile with his mother and two sisters in 1968; his father's request for an exit permit had been denied, and he joined them two years later. "I cried the day I left Cuba," he told me. Dr. Julia Marante left in 1971 with her mother, brother, and three sisters. Her father, Benito Junco, was a plantado — a political prisoner who repudiates Marxist-Leninist "rehabilitation" — and died shortly before Julia fled the savagery he resisted.

The parents of Mario Manuel de la Peña, one of the four Brothers to the Rescue murdered by Fidel Castro on February 24, 1996. In a 1996 interview with Time magazine, Castro said, "We [Castro and his brother, Raul] gave the order to the head of the air force." Mario was an American citizen.

I also had the honor of speaking with Dr. Biscet's wife, Elsa Morejón. The regime has tormented this woman since her infancy. She told the Sun-Sentinel: "I didn't have a childhood because my father was jailed [from 1961 to 1974]. Now my husband is in prison. This is a nightmare without an end." Not content to rip Dr. Biscet from his wife and children, the Communists dispossessed her of her livelihood as a nurse, and has denigrated and bullied her.

In addition to interacting with Dr. Biscet's defenders, I sought support from prominent black political figures Randall Robinson of TransAfrica Forum, Reverend Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, and Kweisi Mfume of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In open letters on November 7 and November 15, I presented them with the facts of Dr. Biscet's subjugation and the elements Communist Cuba shares with the antebellum South (e.g., enslavement, and the throttling of free association and free speech). They have not responded.

Robinson's affection for Castro is egregious in The Debt, which includes rhapsodic recollections of a 1999 meeting with El Líder Máximo — "His eyes shone with intelligent intensity," "He tugs on a beard that is ungovernable," and "Though he was not a young seventy-two, the failing body gave glimpse through the eyes to an inferno of intellect and determination." Robinson claims in 1998's Defending the Spirit that "blacks (and women) are demonstrably better off under Castro than they were under the Batista dictatorship." One doubts that Dr. Biscet, Francisco Herodes Diaz Echemendia, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, Vladimiro Roca, and Cuba's other black prisoners of conscience would concur. Nor is it likely that female dissidents in exile — such as Diary of a Survivor author Ana Rodríguez, Vicky Ruiz Labrit, or Milagros Cruz Cano — would consider the Cuban revolution to have enhanced women's quality of life.

Soon after last year's presidential election, Sharpton boasted on The Chris Rock Show: "I was this week in Jamaica and Cuba. Monday I had lunch with Fidel Castro. That's part of being Al Sharpton: You start the week with Fidel, you end the week with Chris Rock. That only happens to me." While Sharpton lunched with Castro, Dr. Biscet entered his twelfth month as a prisoner of conscience.

As for Mfume, he is too busy battling the defunct Confederacy to confront the present enslavement of over 11 million Cubans, a high percentage of whom are Afro-Cubans. The NAACP's online timeline cites a massive anti-apartheid rally it organized in New York — but apparently Cuba's enslaved, muzzled people of color do not merit similar efforts.
In marked contrast to the inaction of these individuals, the daily expressions of solidarity I received from Cuban exiles provided precious encouragement. While the exile community's anti-Castro methodology contains grievous deficiencies, I have only gratitude for the handshakes, hugs, and e-mails from them and others.

The fast commenced on a significant date, and its conclusion, on November 27, was also significant. On November 27, 1871, the Spanish imperial regime in Cuba executed eight medical students accused of vandalizing loyalist Gonzalo Castañón's grave. (See Fermín Valdés Domínguez's Tragedy in Havana.)

Cuban Bolshevism has exacerbated this murderous terrorism, and José Martí's description of the Spanish regime in Political Prison in Cuba also encapsulates the Castro regime: "the most iniquitous violation of morality, and the most complete obliviousness to every sentiment of justice." Castro atrocity deniers can be referred to any of a number of pieces of evidence, for instance, the massacre of over 40 people — including children and infants — on July 13, 1994, for trying to flee tyranny.

Like former prisoner of conscience Natan Sharansky, Dr. Biscet enjoys chess. I look forward to playing several games with him after Cuba's emancipation.