CUBA: CUBAN DISSIDENT MENOYO INTERVIEW

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• published: 21 Jul 2015
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Spanish/Nat A leading Cuban dissident has arrived in Havana in the hope of gaining permission to set up an official opposition to Fidel Castro on the island. Eloy Gutierre-Menoyo once stood side by side with Castro in fulfilling the Revolutionary dream but is now the leader of Miami based Cambio Cubano - a group founded to promote peaceful and democratic change in Cuba. APTN has an exclusive interview with Menoyo as he waits to for a meeting with members of Castro's government. Four decades ago, Eloy Gutierre-Menoyo led a rebel force that helped topple Cuba's government, allowing a young revolutionary named Fidel Castro to assume power. The loose alliance didn't last. Gutierrez-Menoyo soon turned against Castro and spent 22 years in Cuban prisons, where beatings robbed him of sight in one eye and hearing in one ear. Somewhere amidst the blows, hunger strikes and years of solitude, Gutierrez-Menoyo says he realized violent insurrection would do no good. Now living in exile in suburban Miami, Gutierrez-Menoyo fights on. Not with bullets, but with a conviction that peaceful dialogue with Castro is the only way to create democracy in Cuba. Since 1995, he has been asking the Cuban government to allow the group he leads, Cambio Cubano, (Cuban Change) to open an office in Havana. The group, which boasts over 2-thousand members, was founded to promote peaceful, democratic change on the island. So far the answer has been no. This is his first official visit to Havana in over one year. He hopes to meet with government representatives yet again. He has already asked for an audience with Fidel Castro and new Foreign Minister Felipe Perez, but has now been waiting in this hotel for ten days. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) "The position I have with Cambio Cubano is to head an organization which is working towards a peaceful solution, through dialogue, to find answers to the Cuban problem. I have sent a letter asking for an interview at a high level and the answer was verbal that it depends on visas. I want to say that Foreign Relations sent me the visas and here I am. I assume it is as a result of the letter I sent. I don't guarantee that though, because I do not trust the logic of this system." SUPER CAPTION: Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, Dissident Campaigner Speakingly exclusively to Associated Press, he also spoke of his personal and political aspirations. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) "I want to live in this country with my family and I want to open Cambio Cubano offices here. Not offices to carry out destabilizing work, but offices that mark the beginning of a democratic process. In these offices we would have the right to meet, the right of free expression, of transition and of affiliation. And from this legal space we move forward step by step with the backing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I am also speaking of the necessary changes and openings that the country will have to undertake following the crisis that we all live in here and the differences that have been generated by having parallel economies." SUPER CAPTION: Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, Dissident Campaigner Menoyo has buried the hatred he once felt for the Cuban president, and he has done what many of Miami's exile leaders consider unthinkable: He has met with Castro. He has shaken his hand - four times in the past four years. Menoyo insists he will keep pressing and speaking out for a less confrontational policy between the United States and Cuba. He moved to Miami shortly after the Revolution and became military leader for the newly formed anti-Castro group Alpha 66. In 1964, he landed in Cuba with three men in hopes of starting an insurrection. His life started anew with his release in 1986. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/94947c9f21bd0bcbb795ed65a7f85d8c Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork