FOR ELECTION NIGHT 2004, America’s senior diplomat in Havana threw a party–the only such gala in town. James Cason decked out his residence with balloons, campaign materials, a giant-screen TV, and a mock voting station. His Cuban guests, maybe 180 people, watched CNN en Español, and learned of U.S. electoral rules via telephone hookup. Many wore Bush-Cheney buttons. And when they cast mock ballots, it was George Bush in a landslide–only 15 percent went for John Kerry. Cason says his visitors stayed till 3 in the morning. “We couldn’t get rid of them,” he laughs.
Chief of mission at the U.S. Interests Section (a de facto embassy), Cason is known for boldly promoting democratic ways in Cuba. His efforts thrill Cuban Americans, especially Republicans. “Jim Cason will be remembered as one of the great friends of the Cuban people,” says Miami-area congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart. Florida senator Mel Martinez likewise sees Cason as “a real historic figure.”
The New Jersey-born Cason, 60, is a 35-year veteran of the Foreign Service. He first made waves during a stint in Montevideo. In May 1982, Uruguay’s right-wing military regime expelled Cason for his contacts with Uruguayan democrats in the opposition.
Prior to assuming his Havana post in September 2002, Cason knew little about Cuba, but he’d had a taste of another Caribbean island. He says of his arrival in Grenada shortly after its 1983 liberation by the U.S. military, “I’d never seen people come running up to you and put their arms around you and say, ‘Thank you for saving us.’ That stuck with me.”
In Cuba, Cason logged over 6,000 travel miles during his first six months on the job. He ventured outside Havana “every other week,” he says, “always invited by the Cubans.” He gave away thousands of books and short-wave radios. He also hosted Cuba’s pro-democracy dissidents at his official residence, and invited them to the U.S. mission. The mission provided access to Radio Martí, TV Martí, CNN en Español, children’s books, films, the Internet, and foreign press clips. “Anything that Cuba banned, we would show,” Cason explains.
Bound by U.S. policy, he did not offer Cubans cash, but he aided them in myriad other ways. At the time, “lots of independent groups were springing up,” Cason recalls. It wasn’t to last. In March and April 2003, Cuban authorities locked up some 75 dissidents, many of them charged with meeting under Cason’s auspices.
“They really tried to take out the main activists,” Cason says, namely, Marta Beatriz Roque, head of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, and the Ferrer brothers, key members of Oswaldo Payá’s Christian Liberation Movement. At least 14 of the original 75 have since been released, including Marta Beatriz Roque. But all the releases were conditional furloughs. “They’re not free,” Cason argues. “What [Castro’s] basically saying is, ‘Leave the country.'”
Maybe some will, but not Roque. She plans to hold a congress of her Assembly this spring. And Payá has rebuilt his organization. “Down, but not out,” is how Cason paints the dissident forces. The regime “won’t let them get too large and too active.” But “they’ve learned how to live within the system.”
U.S. diplomats must do the same. In early March 2003, right before the crackdown, Castro imposed draconian curbs on their travel. Cason says mission officials can no longer leave the Havana area–“except to visit dual-national prisoners” and meet ships bearing Cubans plucked from the sea. So they have adjusted.
“Instead of having an outreach program, we have what we call an ‘inreach’ program,” Cason explains. Several weeks after his election-night festivities, he held a Christmas party for the children of political prisoners. And last September he drew media attention by unveiling a replica of a Cuban solitary confinement prison cell in his backyard. He based the model on a description that jailed Cuban democrat Oscar Biscet gave his wife. Save for the heat, “everything in there was authentic,” says Cason, right down to the cockroaches. “That cell now is a permanent part of” the U.S. mission.
The stunt was typical of Cason, who emphasizes “the use of symbols and images . . . things that [will] catch international attention.” At Christmas, he illuminated the Interests Section with holiday icons–such as Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus, and reindeer–and a gigantic neon “75.” At first, few Cubans understood what “75” meant. “That was the reason we put it up,” Cason stresses. He knew Cuban leaders “would overreact, because they always do.” Sure enough, the regime soon fired back with a huge billboard across the street depicting U.S. abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. Stamped “Made In USA,” it also contained a large red swastika and the word “Fascistas.” A nearby poster depicted Cason as a swastika-sporting corporal dropping bombs from his sleigh.
Even so, Cason believes his side “won” the Christmas war. “Now everybody in Cuba knows that they have these political prisoners,” he says. A group of Cuban musicians personally thanked him for his “75.”
Fidel has made him into “Darth Vader,” Cason says, but ordinary Cubans seem to appreciate his work. More than 4,000 Cubans drop by the U.S. Interests Section each month. They see the mission–originally opened during the Carter administration as a step toward normalizing relations–as a spearhead of the island’s democracy drive.
Formally, the Interests Section is part of the Swiss embassy, but it has its own building and staff, which Castro limits to 51 people. Access to high-level Cuban officials is all but zero. The regime frequently harasses American diplomats, and monitors “everything”–phone calls, emails, meetings.
During the recent Christmas spat, Havana threatened to close the U.S. mission. In the end, they just bombarded it with music. Meanwhile, a cartoon aired on state TV lampooning Cason as “Transition Man.” In the cartoon, Cason dons a wizard outfit supplied by worms (gusanos is Fidel’s name for Cuban exiles). With a tap of his wand, he turns a free health care center into a private clinic. Then a gaggle of angry Cubans chase him away.
Cason takes this in stride–he is having a T-shirt made with “Transition Man” on it–and ponders the prospects for a real transition. “There are a lot of reformists in the government,” he notes. That bodes well. But first, Fidel must go. Cuba’s 78-year-old Stalinist strongman rejects the Chinese model of market-friendly authoritarianism. His brother, Raúl Castro, the heir apparent, is said to have pro-China sympathies. He might prove Cuba’s Deng Xiaoping. But then, asks Cason, “What if Raúl dies first?”
Either way, Cason, whose three-year tour ends next fall, probably won’t be in Cuba for the morning after. When it comes, he argues, the U.S. embargo and travel ban will be vital tools for “leveraging” reform. Cason expects an initial post-Castro regime to feature “some kind of a collective decision-making body, heavily involving the military,” that “may or may not have civilians, and may or may not someday have dissidents.”
For now, Cuba’s dissidents are anxiously preparing. On December 10, more than a dozen trekked to Cason’s backyard to bury a time capsule. Their letters of advice to future citizens of a Cuban democracy went into the capsule, along with George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless, various reports on Castro’s abuses, President Bush’s Cuba speech of May 20, 2002, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other pro-freedom literature. Cason’s plan is that the capsule will be opened on the day all his efforts are directed toward: “the eve of the first democratic elections in Cuba.”
Duncan Currie is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.
