Raúl Rivero - Fascist

[naaman fletcher]

Raúl Rivero Castañeda is a Cuban poet, journalist, and dissident. Rivero was born in 1945 in Morón, Camagüey, in central Cuba.
In his youth, he was an ardent follower of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. He was among the first generation of journalists to graduate after the triumph of the Revolution. From 1973-1976 he was the chief correspondent of the official Cuban press in Moscow. He also served as chairman of the pro-regime National Union of Writers and Artists. He was then known as "the Poet of the Revolution", and associated with the major cultural figures of communist Cuba.

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In 2003, as a part of the "Black Spring" crackdown on dissidents, Rivero was charged with "acting against Cuban independence and attempting to divide Cuban territorial unity", as well as with writing "against the government", organizing "subversive meetings" at his home, and collaborating with US diplomat James Cason.<1> Rivero was convicted and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. He spent his first 11 months in a tiny one-man cell with no windows or any contact to the outside world. The arrest of Rivero was later defended by Cuban writer and culture minister Abel Prieto who argued that Rivero "was not arrested for his views, but for receiving US funding for his collaboration with a country that has besieged our island." <2> Rivero has asserted, in prison interrogations as well as in public, that all funds received consisted of fees for his articles, paid by the publishing media, not by governments or political organizations.

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Having come around to the view held here that Castro is not a brutal dictator, and that there are press freedoms and no political prisonsers, I am determined to make sure everyone knows the stories of the fascist traitors who have sullied the name of the great socialist revolution in Cuba.