A Bush voter: Martha Beatriz Roque

[Mika]

No wonder she has so much RW support here.


http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/542171.html

When Martha Beatriz Roque uses an Internet cafe in Cuba, not only does the government read all the dissident's electronic missives, but they dust the keyboard for fingerprints.

They tap her phone and film her walking, protesting, shopping and even typing. Then they show it all on TV, as proof that the 63-year-old former economist is on the dole of Washington and Miami militants with ties to terrorism.

''This is a never-ending soap opera that is being released episode by episode,'' Roque told The Miami Herald by phone from Havana. ``Today they'll show the second part and maybe tomorrow there will be a part three. I will speak out when the show is over.''

After nearly two decades as a member of Cuba's dissident movement, Roque finds herself under attack again as the Cuban government releases copies of her emails and footage of her movements showing she allegedly received money from militant anti-Castro activists in Miami and that the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana served as the ''mule'' to deliver the cash.

Roque is still on parole from a 2003 conviction on ''crimes against the state,'' and this latest controversy could be the thing that lands her back behind bars to finish the 18 years left on her sentence.

The Cuban government newspaper Granma on Wednesday published several emails she allegedly wrote blasting other dissidents, calling them brazen pimps. Officials also have said more evidence of her ''mercenary'' activities will be released in coming days.

The first series of emails the government published indicated that she allegedly took $1,500 a month from a Miami group founded by Santiago Alvarez, the imprisoned benefactor of Luis Posada Carriles, a longtime anti-Castro militant accused of a deadly 1975 airline bombing.

''Cuba says Santiago Alvarez is a terrorist,'' Roque said. ``The only thing he's been charged with is illegal possession of weapons.''

Roque was a professor at the University of Havana and an official at Cuba's sugar ministry before joining the fledgling opposition movement 18 years ago. A vocal advocate for democracy who heads the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, she has spent five years behind bars.

''Do you remember the `Kiss of Death?''' said Domingo Amuchastegui, a former Cuban intelligence officer who defected in 1994. ``To me, every dissident who connects themselves to the Interests Section and to the exiles in Miami are losing any possibility of legitimacy.''

He said Roque in particular was always controversial, in the past because she had a harsh style, and now because she puts too much emphasis on the goings on in Miami and Washington.

''Martha Beatriz was one of the most hated officials in the Ministry of Sugar for many, many years. She was an extremist,'' Amuchastegui said. ``I did not take her seriously in the days she was a staunch communist, and I don't take her seriously now. I don't think she's a political leader of any sort.''

Roque is one of Cuba's most prominent dissidents and a favorite of some exile groups in Miami. But her close ties to both Washington and groups that advocate a hardline policy toward the communist-ruled nation have long rankled not only the Cuban government but also other members of the opposition in Havana. She is considered a hardliner who openly supports George Bush, and once cast a mock vote on his behalf.

''Martha is a very brave woman who has been in prison a long time,'' human rights leader Elizardo Sánchez said by phone from Havana. ``I don't think this is going to make her change her mind.''

Roque was one of six children born to Spaniards from the Canary Islands. Her father lost his taxi company after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, but despite that, Roque was a firm believer in the revolution, even as her siblings left one by one for Miami.

''I believed in the revolution, yes, yes, yes,'' Roque said this week. ``I believed in all their lies.''

She said it was not one single event that made her join the opposition.

''The process is slow and reflective,'' Roque said. ``It creates an emptiness inside you. You think about your work, your inspirations, your life. And then realize you were struggling for something that doesn't work. That's truly disappointing.''

Roque was the director of the Cuban Institute of Independent Economists in the mid 1990s when she and three other dissidents collaborated on a leaflet called The Homeland Belongs to All. The four were charged with threatening foreign investors, lying about the state of Cuba's economy and plotting to disrupt local elections.

In 1997, she was jailed and in 1999 was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. She was released in 2000 after a 52-day hunger strike.

''She saw how the government was killing people and didn't let young people study in the university. All those things made her change and struggle for the nation,'' said Nenita Roque, one of Roque's three sisters in Miami. ``She is not a terrorist or anything. She is simply a person who, with her writings and her word, has struggled and continues to struggle to see Cuba free.''

In Miami, the longtime dissident is widely praised on conservative Cuban exile radio shows, while other government opponents on the island who do not back the economic embargo are sometimes shunned. Roque recently spoke on the telephone with Bush, and surprised some when she asked him to ease controversial travel restrictions.

Roque is closely associated with the American diplomatic mission in Havana, where she attends special events, uses the Internet and is dialed in to the U.S.-funded Radio Martí in Miami to speak out against the Castro government.

In 2003, the former chief of the Interests Section, James Cason, was a guest at a meeting with dissidents at her house.

Weeks later, the government rounded up 75 government opponents across the island in what came to be known as ''black spring.'' Sentenced to as long as 27 years, most of them remain imprisoned. Roque also was jailed and sentenced to a 20-year prison term, but was one of 14 people released for medical reasons.

''She is smart, dynamic and committed, but she is not a team player,'' said Vicki Huddleston, a former head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. ``She does not want to play second fiddle to anyone. She wants to be the leader in Cuba.''

A 2004 survey by the University of Miami polled 217 Cubans within three days of their arrival in the United States. Only 5 percent had ever heard of her.

The only coverage the Cuban government press ever gives her are exposés showing her shopping or allegedly conspiring with American diplomats.

''Cubans see her as a political representative,'' said Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies. ``The last thing a Cuban wants to talk about is politics.''

Roque, he said, is ''honorable and highly respected in her inner circle'' but has trouble selling her agenda within the dissidence movement. Like other opposition leaders in Havana and Miami, she's becoming irrelevant particularly among young people, Gomez said.

Her sister Nenita pleads with her to leave Cuba.

''I don't want her to be martyr,'' she said. ``I have begged her many times to leave and she won't do it... She will struggle till the end.''

[Judi Lynn]

1. You know you're in trouble as a "dissident" when the American Interests Section doesn't even like

you! Vicki Huddleston was such a Bush buttinski in Cuba, as she assumed she would simply go over the heads of the Cuban government directly to the people herself, and started handing out cheapie short wave radios to allow everyone to bust past the Cuban blocking of Radio Marti, the American propaganda station in a country which receives American tv and radio programming loud and clear already, Vickie simply turned Cubans off, big time.

They truly resented her after they got to know her, and started boycotting their local Cuban Kennel Club because Vickie insisted on going to all their activities and bringing her Afghan, "Havana." Vicki was encouraged by _{George W. Bush} to continually "push the envelope" in Cuba, to mount an aggressive assault on the Cuban government in her daily behavior through provocative actions.

If she finds Marta Beatriz Roque a total asshole, that's quite the endorsement!



Marta Beatriz Roque, in all her glory.
This report is consistant with what you'd expect, and of course it's toned down, because Marta is possibly the most well-known of the "dissidents," regardless of the fact Oswaldo Payá and Elizardo Sanchez are people who have actually done far more to gain recognition.

Thanks, Mika, for posting this Marta information. It totally confirmed the suspicions I had about how she affects people in general. She's one creepy, creepy woman.

No doubt the reason she has become so bitter a foe of the country is because they didn't agree that she deserves to be the big kahuna. The article does bear out the fact she insists on being in charge.

She SHOULD come to the U.S. and see just how far that attitude gets her here! It could be she already suspects and that's the reason she doesn't just go ahead and join her siblings here, as they've asked her to do. She probably already suspects there's NO PLACE FOR HER anywhere until she modifies her nasty behavior.