Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, a top Cuban resistance leader known as “Antunez,” will be on hand for President Obama’s State of the Union address as Speaker John Boehner’s personal guest.
Boehner’s decision to invite Antunez will telecast the GOP leader’s opposition to Obama’s executive action normalizing relations with Cuba to an international audience.
The 43-year-old leader of Cuba’s civic resistance movement who served more than 17 years in a Cuban prison, also has a blunt message for Obama: he considers the agreement the president struck with Cuban President Raul Castro as “illegitimate” because he said it was negotiated in secret and did not involve leaders of Cuba’s resistance movement or average Cubans.
If given an audience with Obama, he said he would tell the president that the “way to change in Cuba is not by engaging the Castro regime.”
“The stronger the regime becomes economically because of investment, the weaker the resistance becomes,” he told the Washington Examiner Monday night.
Antunez has first-hand experience of what it’s like to tangle with the Castro regime, which released him in 2007 ahead of expected European sanctions on the island. He lives in Cuba and will return there in two weeks.
He was imprisoned in 1990 after participating in a pro-democracy march. In prison, he refused to wear the uniform provided and rejected communist re-education lessons, which resulted in guards sending him to solitary confinement and adding more years to his original five-year sentence.
Of Afro-Cuban descent, fellow inmates nicknamed him the “black diamond” to recognize what they considered his courage and unbreakable spirit, and many Cubans refer to him as the island’s Nelson Mandela.
In his essay “A Word From the Opposition,” in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Democracy, Antunez highlighted the Cuban resistance movement’s adherence to the non-violent principles set forth by Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King.
He is married to Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, president of the Rosa Parks Women’s Movement.
Already in Washington Monday, Antunez talked to the Examiner by telephone via an interpreter Monday night.
Q: What is your reaction to Boehner inviting you to the State of the Union speech and what is the message you want to convey to the American people?
A: “This is more than a thing about him. It’s an important recognition to the Cuban resistance, and he’s here representing the Cuban resistance. He’s an ambassador for the Cuban resistance — for those struggling inside Cuba. He especially feels that he is here representing all of those prisoners who are not released in response to the Obama-Castro agreement.
He is very grateful to Speaker Boehner for having invited him.”
Q: If you could talk to Obama, what would you tell him?
A: “He would tell President Barack Obama the way to change Cuba is not by engaging the Castro regime, and that Cuba is not the Castro regime — that the stronger the regime become economically because of investment, the weaker the resistance becomes.
The Cuban people are hungry, but they are hungry for respect and dignity and full respect for their rights. Cubans are not animals — they are human beings who want freedom and dignity, and he believes the agreement [between Obama and Castro] are betrayals of the aspirations of freedom to the Cuban people.
The future of Cuba should not have been agreed to in secret as these secret negotiations between the Obama administration and the regime have been carried out. No agreement that excludes the Cuban resistance can be considered legitimate.”
Q: What do you think about Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson’s visit to Cuba this week to continue negotiations?
A: “Well, as a Cuban who has been betrayed by the Castro regime, I cannot sanction that trip.
I don’t have anything against Secretary Jacobson because she is an official of a democratically-elected government, but I am not going to sanction a visit to Cuba of a government official.
They are going to negotiate with a regime that is carrying out persecution of my government. The only thing these negotiations do is strengthen the legitimacy of the oppressors.
Since [Jacobson] is already there [in Cuba], she should listen to what the opposition says … She should walk the streets and meet with the Cuban people and see what they have to say. She should know all the populist leaders who are struggling throughout the island and listen to what they have to say. That would help her change the administration’s impression of what’s going on in Cuba. Perhaps this would better inform her and she can tell Obama that the real situation in about repression, repression and more repression.
She should demand the release of all prisoners. Some have been in jail for two decades and they have been ignored in these negotiations.
First of all, he thinks the negotiations should have been public and transparent, should not have been done in a hidden manner. Both those who are in favor and against these negotiations were surprised by the way in which they were announced. This was announced as if something had really been achieved by the Cuban people.
All political prisoners should have been released before sanctions were eased.
The rights of the Cuban people should have been prioritized over economic affairs. Obama should have gotten a commitment to carry out free elections and all Cubans should participate in free elections. A vast majority of the resistance leaders are against the Obama-Castro agreement.”
Q: What do you make of some recent U.S. polls showing that a strong majority of U.S. citizens support normalizing relations with Cuba?
A: “We’ve been following some of those poll results — we don’t think they are accurate, we don’t think they represent the true criteria of the American people. We know that there is a lot of economic interest in lifting the sanctions.
We are not going let ourselves be influence by these polls. The only survey that counts is the one that is being carried out inside the streets of Cuba and the [feelings] of the Cuban political prisoners and their families. It’s a poll of the thousands of people who are in exile and won’t give up on their dream of freedom.
What is at stake here is the freedom of our people and the future of the Cuban people. There are are a lot of economic interests against the Cuban people’s liberation. We are reaffirming our conviction and struggling for change.”
Q: Do you have anything else you would like to add?
A: “This is very important. I have in my hand a document, An Agreement for Democracy in Cuba, which was agreed upon by the vast majority of resistance organizations in 1998. It demands the complete release of all political prisoners, and free elections among other rights.
[I’m carrying this] to bear witness to my constant concern about my brothers in prison, Ciro Alexis Casanova and Ernesto Borges Perez and Armando Sosa Fortuny. I want to present this document as a testament to the stand for their principles. These names of these two political prisoners is part of a very long list [and they] are the main reason why I’m here to make this agreement known as well as the names of the political prisoners that are still being held captive. They are the central narrative that we are building.”
