Cuba's Ricardo Alarcón on Wednesday asserted his country's imprisoned journalists had been working for the U.S. government and swore that Cuban-Americans hoping to recover long-lost property on the island "will never have any role, absolutely any role, in this country again."
Speaking via satellite to an auditorium full of Hispanic journalists, Alarcón said his government jailed some two dozen journalists in 2003 because they were paid by the United States. The accusations were not new, but underscored the controversy around his invitation to speak at the annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Fort Lauderdale.
Cuban-Americans dressed in black gathered outside the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, holding posters picturing independent journalists held in Cuban jails, some serving sentences of more than 20 years.
One large poster featured Guillermo Fariñas, a Cuban journalist who has been on a hunger strike for the right to Internet access.
"They may be journalists, but they are not independent," said Alarcón, president of Cuba's National Assembly, and one of the most prominent and worldly members of Fidel Castro's government. "They were dependent on a foreign power. Cuba has the right to protect itself."
A 2005 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists named Cuba as one of the world's leading jailers of journalists, second only to China.
Asked to comment on some Cuban-Americans' hopes of returning to their homeland once Castro leaves power, Alarcón said there might be a day when long-standing hostilities ease. But he said those who have been lobbying from Miami to recover land and homes in Cuba would have no place there.
In the interview, Alarcon responded to brass-knuckle questions from Cuban-born Mirta Ojito, a Columbia University journalism professor. At one point, she asked how Cuba would manage if the United States lifted its decades-old economic embargo. "Who would be the enemy then?" she said.
Alarcón did not respond directly, but turned to the topic of U.S. attempts to "dominate" Cuba, and one of Cuba's proudest achievements: the 30,000 physicians it has dispatched to hardscrabble barrios in impoverished countries around the world.
Asked why Cubans were leaving the island in rising numbers, he said other Latin American countries were seeing a tide of emigration to the United States that was proportionately larger than Cuba's.
Ojito also took written questions from the audience, including a query about Castro's health. The 79-year-old leader is rumored to be suffering from Parkinson's disease, among other ailments.
"Fidel Castro is very, very strong and healthy," Alarcón said with a laugh. "He doesn't have any of those diseases that are attributed to him."
The Cuban-Americans holding posters outside the center said they were not protesting, but wanted to educate visiting journalists about limited access to information in Cuba, and persecution of those who express dissenting views. Most Cubans don't have computers, and only a few government jobs carry full Internet privileges.
Alarcon's satellite appearance comes at a particularly frosty point in U.S.-Cuba relations, with the Cuban government cracking down on dissidents and the Bush administration tightening the U.S. trade and travel ban on the island nation. Attendee Daniel Morales, marketing manager for Velázquez Press in El Monte, Calif., said he believed Ojito's questioning of Alarcón was too political, perhaps influenced by pressure from Miami's Cuban-American community.
"I think she went too far to appease that audience," he said. "The interview turned into a tally of positions of a political sub-group that doesn't reflect Hispanics as a whole."
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel is a sponsor of the NAHJ convention.
