Dissident Poet Freed In Cuba

By CBS News Producer Portia Siegelbaum

Rivero is the latest in a series of releases this week. The move suggests Cuba is trying to mend fences with the European Union. Relations with the EU chilled after Rivero and 74 other dissidents were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms in March 2003. Fueling this idea is the fact that just last week, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque announced the resumption of formal contacts with Spain.

Rivero, nonetheless, said he doesn't believe it's the result of any pressure brought to bear on Havana. "It seems to be a private initiative of the Cuban Government ... an independent decision." He did not rule out however, that Havana had come to a mutual accord with the Spanish government, an "opening of roads."

Three dissidents returned home on Monday and Rivero said a fifth was freed along with him but that could not be independently confirmed. That still leaves over 60 of the original group of 75 dissidents scattered in prisons across the island.

All of the other prisoners were apparently paroled because of health problems. However, Rivero, smoking a cigarette as he spoke to a group of international journalists who crammed into his fourth-floor walk-up apartment, insisted "that's not my case ... they had told me I was fine. I felt deplorably healthy." But he admits prison doctors have diagnosed him to be suffering from emphysema and cysts on a kidney.

Speaking of his time in prison, the winner of the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize last February said, "The first months were especially difficult for me. I left my house directly for a punishment cell. It was a brutal shock."

Rivero spent 11 months in that space he describes as, "small, humid, cold" and was handcuffed whenever he was allowed out to get some sun or to see the doctor. Still, he insisted, "Even there we received medical attention. The doctor and nurse came daily."

He said that unlike some of the 75 sentenced along with him but held in other prisons, he had not been handled badly.

"In general I was well treated by the guards, treated very professionally," said Rivero, who was serving time in Ciego de Avila, in central Cuba.

In prison his jailers allowed him to write love poems, which after checking they passed on to his wife. Those poems are about to be published in Spain under the title, "Corazon sin furia" or Heart Without Fury. In addition to writing, he read voluminously, including the novel, "The Count of Monte Cristo" that someone sent him.

In fact, Rivero went so far as to describe his prison experience as a "privilege that few writers have been able to have...to see a prison from inside ".

It was very "intense and dramatic" and changed him. "I think I'm a better person ... the prison is an exercise in humility...glory doesn't matter...it doesn't matter what gets published. You're there suffering." Prison also taught him to value other things differently, "To be close to my daughter, my wife, my mother."

Rivero, 59, said no conditions were put on his parole but still he has no intention of restarting the independent news agency Cuba Press that he created in 1995. "That exhausted itself," he concluded, adding, "I'm tired."

Instead, he'd like to work by himself, to write for foreign newspapers, magazines or radio, "writing as I've always written, without controls, whatever I think I can." He suggested other government critics should also work individually, saying it's something they've forgotten how to do. "Every time two people get together they want to form a group, to sign something."

While he defended his and their right to accept invitations to foreign embassies, Rivero said it had been a mistake to run to the U.S. Interests Section asking for pens and other items. And he thinks it was particularly senseless for the independent journalists to go to the home of the American ambassador to celebrate "Journalists Day", especially since the date was one established by the Castro Government.

"You have to be crazy ... to go there talk about journalistic ethics," he said referring to a gathering at the home of James Cason, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Participation in that event was presented at their trials as part of the government's evidence of collusion with Washington.

He blames a "very difficult moment" in which the government felt it was losing control of the opposition movement for the massive sweep of dissidents that left him imprisoned. "You couldn't touch it, but it was there. And the Government decided to take radical measures."

That, he thinks, created an atmosphere of fear and put the opposition on "standby," although he admits that he hasn't yet had time to talk to anyone about what is happening.

And for the moment he has no plans to abandon his country. "I've never wanted to leave Cuba, not because of stupid blind patriotism but because this is my country and I have always felt well here." But his decision will depend on how things work out. "It's been nearly 20 years since they last let me travel. If everything is resolved so that I can live like any normal citizen, so that I can leave and return like other writers and journalists do, I have no reason to leave."

By Portia Siegelbaum