Illinois Gov. George Ryan met with Cuban President Fidel Castro for the second time in as many days Wednesday, ending his visit to the island with a pledge to strengthen links between Cuba and Illinois despite the Clinton administration’s criticism of his talks with the Cuban leader.
Ryan and his party arrived in Chicago Wednesday night declaring the trip a political and humanitarian success. Aboard their chartered flight was Raudel Medina Alfonso, a severely ill 7-year-old whom Castro allowed to travel to the United States with his mother for treatment of a congenital liver disorder.
In Havana, the Cuban leader marked the end of the Illinois delegation’s five-day visit with a marathon two-hour press conference in which he lambasted the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, dismissed the notion of political reform on the island, proclaimed his personal faith in God and insisted the U.S. stock market was on the verge of collapse.
A graying Castro, dressed in customary green fatigues, walked with Ryan into Havana University for a series of final speeches, and later praised the Illinois delegation visit for its “courage,” saying the governor “has made a very good impression here.”
But Castro flatly rejected Ryan’s request for the release of Cuba’s four most prominent dissidents. Known as the “Gang of Four,” they were convicted earlier this year of crimes against the state after issuing an open letter calling for a national dialogue on political and economic reforms.
“Under pressure, we free nobody,” Castro said in his news conference when asked about the jailed dissidents.
In Washington, the State Department said it welcomed Ryan’s attention to human rights during his visit, in which he met with prominent dissidents. But officials were critical of Ryan’s seven-hour overnight talk with Castro, saying personal visits with the Cuban leader should be avoided “to not give the impression that anyone supports the oppression that he has visited on his people.
“We’d prefer that there not be a lot of high-level contact with Castro so long as he refuses to lift his embargo on the Cuban people,” said State Department spokesman James Rubin. “But if people are going to go, as a practical matter we think it’s better to encourage them to focus on human rights than to stick our head in the sand and say, `We wish you hadn’t gone.’ “
In his farewell remarks, Ryan said the visit had succeeded in its humanitarian aims and that the Illinois delegation had made progress at creating new understanding between the two longtime rival nations. He did not repeat his call of recent days for ending the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.
“We came here five days ago to build bridges to the future. We leave here today knowing those bridges are firmly in place,” the governor said. “I believe we have established a line of communication that will help all people.”
The governor announced the creation of a Cuba-Illinois Exchange Council to foster educational, cultural, social and sports exchanges between Illinois and Cuba, and said he would like to be able to bring the Cubs or White Sox to Havana to play Cuba’s national baseball team.
Later, after his arrival in Chicago, Ryan said, “I think you’ll see more people following in our footsteps over the bridges we’ve built.”
Cuban-Americans who support the 37-year U.S. embargo against Castro’s regime bitterly criticized Ryan’s trip. “The governor has made a fatal error,” said Guillermo Bauta, secretary of the Illinois Cuban-American Chamber of Commerce. “The only way to forgive the trip is to tell the truth about what he saw. The problem is not the embargo. The problem is Fidel Castro.”
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But other Cuban-Americans who oppose Castro had a different perspective, contending that lifting the embargo may be the only way to help the Cuban people get basic goods they need. “The only country that still has an embargo against Cuba is the United States. Even the United Nations has called for an end to the embargo. The issue is how you can help the Cuban people there,” said Jorge Rodriguez-Florido, a professor of Spanish at Chicago State University who fled Cuba in 1962.
Earlier, as the governor’s delegation was scheduled to head to Havana’s airport, Castro launched into an exhaustive, impromptu news conference for media traveling with Ryan.
Speaking through an interpreter amid a forest of microphones, the 73-year-old Cuban leader accused U.S. diplomats in Havana of trying to incite counter-revolution in Cuba, dismissed a dissidents’ news conference with visiting journalists earlier in the week as a “mere show,” and claimed that Cuba’s battered state economy is slowly recovering from the end of Soviet aid. “The hardest times are already behind us,” he said.
He insisted Cuba would not agree to adopt economic or political reforms in exchange for the United States lifting its trade embargo. “We do not accept any condition with respect to our position and our internal policies,” he said. ” . . . You cannot strangle a country economically and criticize it at the same time.”
Castro said, however, that Illinois has much to gain from lifting the embargo, claiming that the state had lost $20 billion in sales over the last four decades.
The policy “hurts the farmers of Illinois,” he said. ” . . . In such times as the present, where there’s depression of prices, it doesn’t make sense really to prevent farmers from selling to Cuba.”
As reporters edged in for photos with Latin America’s longest-serving leader and questioned everything from Cuba’s poverty to its treatment of dissidents, a finger-wagging Castro blamed the CIA for many of the island’s ills, talked about his favorite Ernest Hemingway novels and gave a caustic view of the U.S. political scene when asked about prospects for reform of Cuba’s one-party system:
“The Americans have two parties–they are exactly the same.”
Earlier in the day, Ryan visited Havana’s Abraham Lincoln Primary School to deliver supplies and hear readings and songs by students, who study under a poster of Che Guevara declaring “we follow your example.”
Later Ryan received an honorary degree from Havana University marking its 270th anniversary. Castro sat in the front row and led a standing ovation for him.
The highlight of the governor’s trip, however, was his seven-hour meeting with 25 delegates and Castro that began about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the presidential palace. Their dinner of roast lamb and mashed potatoes, around a long, wooden table laden with drinks and cigars, did not begin until after 11 p.m.
Ryan said they discussed everything from baseball to American politics to the baiduhai’s long-standing bid to open a news bureau in Havana.
The governor said he gave Castro a letter appealing for the release of Cuba’s four best-known jailed dissidents, Vladimiro Roca, Rene Gomez Manzano, Marta Beatriz Roque and Felix Bonne. They have been imprisoned since July 1997 on charges of “counter-revolutionary” behavior. Castro accepted the letter, Ryan said, then replied that he had hundreds of similar letters and that this one would be filed with the rest.
“We had some very frank discussions about freedom, human rights, democracy, the needs of the Cuban people and the needs of the American people,” Ryan said.
At one point, members of Ryan’s party said, Castro insisted the Mississippi River begins in Illinois. Several people in the Illinois delegation said, no, the river begins in Minnesota.
Unruffled, Castro got up from the table and grabbed a large world atlas. “Gee, there are many states,” he said, not acknowledging he had been mistaken.
Instead, the Cuban leader segued into a discussion of how easy it would be to transport grain down the Mississippi through New Orleans and into Cuba.
The moment marked their first formal discussion of trade, a subject that was taboo under U.S. government regulations for approval of Ryan’s trip. But it prompted members of Ryan’s party to declare to Castro that they oppose the U.S. embargo and want to see it lifted.
Later, the elected officials and Ryan aides accompanying the governor in the meeting lined up to get their pictures taken with Castro, getting his autograph on blue notebooks set out by the Cubans for the meeting.
Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan described the scene as “kind of like a class of school kids visiting the speaker’s office.”
Asked his impressions of Castro, Ryan said, “He just talks, talks, talks. It’s tough sometimes, you just have to interrupt him. . . .It was kind of exciting to have the opportunity to meet him, but I never forgot for a second that Fidel Castro is a dictator.”
Ryan said he was surprised by State Department criticism of his meeting with Castro. “I had a teleconference with the State Department when I found out the meeting had been scheduled. . . . I was not told to cancel the meeting.”