Published:08/23/92
Section: FRONT
Page: 1A
Passing a wall where "Viva Fidel" had been painted in tall letters, the man grimaced and then hurled a bottle of thick black liquid against the concrete blocks.
Inside the house across the street, Francisco Chaviano, a human rights activist and dissident, recoiled at the sound of shattering glass. At first, he feared the people who had tossed rocks through the windows of his modest home a few weeks earlier had returned.
Startled, he watched as the man grabbed a handful of long grass and tried to smear out President Fidel Castro's name before bolting.
It was just one more chapter in a nasty war of words and intimidation that erupted this summer in this seaside suburb of Havana between factions who favor the Castro regime and those who oppose it.
Pro-government demonstrations against dissidents are not unusual. What is unusual is for the targets -- and others -- to respond with their own insults, graffiti and signs.
Chaviano, a former mathematics professor known for championing the rights of detained rafters, has been the target of the pro-Castro forces. And the wall across the dirt road from his house has become one of the battlegrounds.
Biting words against Chaviano have been emblazoned across the wall, placards brimming with obscenities about him and his family have been posted near his house, and pieces of paper saying "Stick human rights up your ass" have been strewn in the street.
But one morning in late July, Chaviano said, placards denouncing the Cuban government and Castro also appeared around Jaimanitas, a fishing village where a disproportionate number of residents have chosen to brave the Florida Straits rather than stay in Cuba.
Although anti-government graffiti has increased throughout Cuba in the past year with the deepening discontent over the crumbling economy, it still isn't common. Such expressions are usually quickly scrubbed away.
However, in Jaimanitas people have always been more public about their complaints -- perhaps because so many of their friends and relatives have abandoned the island and a number of residents not-so-secretly yearn to join them.
Chaviano himself is an unsuccessful lanchero -- as those who try to flee the island in boats and rafts are called in Cuba -- and headed the old Cuban Rafters Council, whose goal was to aid rafters arrested by the Cuban government during unsuccessful trips. (Illegal flight is a crime in Cuba).
But the rafters group changed its name and its focus in February, becoming the National Council for Civil Rights in Cuba and starting to monitor a broad range of alleged violations of civil liberties.
Although the Cuban government doesn't legally recognize the council, Chaviano said that the group has sent the attorney general's office complaints about five cases of alleged violations of civil liberties.
Among them was an allegation that a group of military men had promised dozens of people they would get them out of Cuba on a boat in exchange for 100,000 pesos, as well as a complaint about the policy of limiting Cubans' access to restaurants and hotels reserved for foreigners.
In early July, Chaviano said, the attorney general's office said three of the complaints had been investigated and the charges found to be false, including the one about the boat payoff. The office didn't respond to the complaint about tourism apartheid, Chaviano said.
On July 11, vulgar expressions attacking Chaviano first appeared on the wall. Among them: the insult "tarru." It means a man whose lover or wife is cheating on him.
Incensed, Chaviano went to the wall and painted "Those who are anonymous are cowards."
An act of repudiation in which a crowd of shouting government supporters painted over Chaviano's words and replaced them with "Viva Fidel" soon followed.
About that time, Chaviano said, authorities began talking about forbidding him to use a vacant lot where he had planted bananas and other crops. Party militants also visited his wife's English-language students and pressured them to drop their classes.
On July 24 -- 10 days after the act of repudiation -- hand- written signs appeared around Jaimanitas attacking the Cuban government, Castro and People's Power, the local assembly, according to Chaviano and other members of his group. There were also some that said "Viva Human Rights."
"The authorities said I was responsible. They blamed me
because I'm the obvious face," said Chaviano. Asked who had put up the
placards, Chaviano responded, "It's natural to think that the people who put
them up hold our cause in high regard, and are sympathizers."
The next morning two rocks came sailing through a window in Chaviano's home and jolted his family awake. Paper wrapped around the rocks bore obscene messages from el pueblo -- the people. Among the few printable sentiments: "You have one shave left."
Chaviano said he plans to continue his human rights work. He said he has always expressed his feelings and it has cost him.
He left his teaching job, for example, after a dispute over teaching methods. He later worked as a construction foreman for the Interior Ministry, but said he was dismissed after his brother-in-law, a Foreign Ministry official, defected in Madrid in 1988. Government officials accused him of having prior knowledge of the defection, he said.
At that point he began thinking about leaving. Chaviano, his son and a friend tried to flee Cuba aboard a small wooden boat in March 1989, but the homemade craft hadn't been properly sealed and began taking on water about seven miles off shore. They were picked up by the Cuban coast guard, and Chaviano spent a year in jail.
"I was feeling really depressed about things at that point and sat around wondering when is this all going to change," he said.
But soon after his release he began to occupy himself with the problems of the lancheros.
Despite his problems, he said, "After I joined (with the human right activists) I was able to live more comfortably with myself."
© 1996 The Miami Herald.